


Alizarin Crimson

by hydrangeamaiden



Series: Grimmnet Collection [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, Childhood Friends, During Canon, F/M, Female Grimmchild (Hollow Knight), Major Character Undeath, Nightmares, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Canon Compliant, POV Multiple, Past Lives, Past Relationship(s), Romance, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 42,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22991464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangeamaiden/pseuds/hydrangeamaiden
Summary: She thinks she has an intuition for these kinds of things, having Wyrm blood in her, but she swears the crackling energy in the air is familiar.This is, thematically, a bit of a sibling fic to cagnition's 'Morning Star and a Nightmare's Embrace'.
Relationships: Grimm & The Pale King (Hollow Knight), Grimm/Hornet (Hollow Knight), Grimm/The Pale King (Hollow Knight), Grimmchild & The Knight (Hollow Knight), Hornet & The Knight (Hollow Knight)
Series: Grimmnet Collection [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551010
Comments: 36
Kudos: 143





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cagnition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagnition/gifts).



Hornet had not approached the tents since they appeared in Dirtmouth. The once humble glow of the faded town burst alight with cold red, and even from her perch in King’s Pass, she could hear the wheeze of accordion music. She pitches her needle down the cliff face, and the thread looped through its eye pulls her along.

She’s supposed to know everything that’s going on in Hallownest, but she doesn’t understand the presence of these travelers. Their tents and their steeds are too large for her to have missed them. She does not want to consider the alternative, that these visitors have supernatural origins. Yet when she enters the town proper, her gut feeling forces her to face this reality. She thinks she has an intuition for these kinds of things, having Wyrm blood in her, but she swears the crackling energy in the air is _familiar_.

Past the tents, an elderly bug stands near an iron bench. Why not sit? There’s a perfectly open spot, right next to a chubby beetle. She walks past the tents, past them, ignoring the elderly bug calling out to her, and goes into the Stag Station.

Empty. No stag beetles in sight. Little Ghost, who spends more time here and would know of these matters better than she, has probably gone riding off to some godforsaken corner of Hallownest to find geo or mask shards or something. She doesn’t want to go looking for them right now.

Back to the tents she goes, then. The red really is brilliant, bleeding into Dirtmouth like an open wound. She had thought her own shabby cloak to be bright, but in comparison, it is just dried blood. The curtains, thick as bedrock and probably as heavy, shield the entrance from the elements. It takes Hornet a moment to find the slice through which she can enter.

The accordion music is as sharp as a nail in here. There’s it’s source: a burly, masked bug who pushes and pulls his instrument without pause. He doesn’t even stop when he sees Hornet creep inside.

“Mmm...Are you here for the show?” the bug asks. With the layers he’s wearing, Hornet can’t tell if he’s an ordinary beetle or something else. She peers into the darkness of the tent, which seems far bigger on the inside than out. It’s hard to say how high the ceiling goes, when so much of it is covered with curtains. Faintly, she remembers the Beast’s Den, and how it had been decorated in a similar fashion. Though by now the tapestries are certainly in disrepair.

Little Ghost has not ventured that far into Deepnest. She has time yet to investigate this strange tent, and whatever lies within. The musician has given up on speaking to her, content to stand and play his ditty for whoever else is brave enough to come inside. Certainly no one in Dirtmouth, when even Hornet is feeling wary. She’s holding the handle of her weapon so tightly that her hand shakes. It might just be a trick of the light, but she swears she’s seeing stars. Red ones, spinning in her eyes no matter which way she looks.

She shakes her head, and her vision returns to normal. To her left is a finely-papered wall, deep red with a repeating pattern she doesn’t recognize. Ahead of her is a pool of red light. Red, red, red. There’s so much it’s starting to hurt. She keeps to the perimeter of the light, and somewhere along the way, she almost trips over a set of steps. They lead into a spectator’s area of raised bleachers. The benches are already packed with bugs. That’s what she hopes they are, anyway. Every last one of them is concealed by dark cloaks and masks which, like the musician’s, have black lines cutting through the eyes.

The only available seat is in the front row, where a short wall separates the audience from the stage. This must be the ‘show’ the musician had mentioned, but what is she meant to be watching?

Just as she is wondering, the stage explodes.

Hornet cries out and grabs her needle, ready to fling herself from the tent as mist fills the air. A gust of wind clears it away, bringing with it showers of confetti in deep purple, brilliant gold, and of course, bright red. The rest of the audience begins to applaud, and she soon sees why: someone has appeared in the center of the stage.

She isn’t sure what he is: a spider? Some kind of moth? Or is he not a bug at all? She cannot tell if those are wings or a cloak around his shoulders. His white face is slashed down the eyes with those same black lines that everyone else here seems to have, and his grinning mouth is full of wicked fangs. He takes a sweeping bow, and the audience’s applause grows stronger.

When he straightens back up, there’s a split second where he and Hornet make eye contact. A shiver runs through her, but he merely winks.

“Welcome, welcome all, to the Grimm Troupe!” His voice sounds like he lost his voice to the flu, and it didn’t come back right. “I see we have a full audience tonight...”

Come to think of it, where  _ did _ the audience come from? Certainly not Hallownest, where almost the entire population is dead.

“Tonight, we feast our eyes upon true magic,” the bug is saying. “Prepare to be enthralled by wonders that one could only dream of.”

Oh. So it’s a magic show—or a circus? She should have guessed as much, from the appearance of the tent, but she had been more concerned with why they were here at all. She still cannot bring herself to feel comfortable with it all, but at least she won’t have to draw her needle?

The stage suits the magician—Grimm—well, though, and she can’t imagine what he’d be like outside of a performance. From the start it’s clear he lives for theatrics, and even the mundane parlor tricks he starts out with have a certain glamour to them. Hornet unconsciously leans forward in her seat, eyes wide, as Grimm pulls an increasingly long string of flags from beneath his cloak. 

With a clap of his hands, the flags turn into maskflies with scarlet wings and sharp horns. They fly to all edges of the room, coming back to the center with garlands of flowers in their mandibles. When the ceiling is thoroughly covered, Grimm holds out his arms for them to perch on. The audience applauds politely. The exception is Hornet, who is watching with silent yet undivided attention.

Grimm brings his arms together, and when he throws them out again, the maskflies are gone. No, they’re in the rafters. Hornet hears a flutter of wings, and when she looks up, there they are. While she’s looking away, he has already started another trick. He has taken a large cloth from seemingly nowhere, and holds it up to the crowd to show it off. Most likely he’s going to take something from it, or turn it into something else. Hornet has seen this trick a thousand times.

Yet she has never been to a circus or magic show in her life, not that she can remember. She watches as he twists up the cloth, and from one end, pulls the handle of an umbrella. Typical, yet somehow she feels charmed by it. The audience laughs when Grimm opens the umbrella, and he is doused in rain. He makes a big show of being bothered by it, shaking out his cloak and holding the umbrella away until the water stops. Steam rolls off him in clouds—glittery clouds, little sparkles that settle on the ceiling like stars. Then, one by one, they fall. Hornet catches one in her outstretched palm. The light fades from it, leaving behind a little candy drop.

These transformations happen one after the other: cloth into umbrella, stars into candy, and now umbrella into a huge flower. It almost feels like a dance performance, rather than a magic show. Perhaps it’s both, and that’s what a ‘circus’ is.

Before she can grow impatient—she was never one to enjoy long shows—Grimm gives a sweeping bow, and the audience erupts into applause. At the same time, a clock begins to toll. Hornet, thoroughly rattled by all the noise, remains frozen in her seat. Not a single bug who leaves the stands goes to the exit. Once they’ve floated a certain distance away, she can no longer see them. When she is finally alone, she wonders how long she has been here. She does not recall it being anywhere near twelve, neither morning nor noon.

Nothing that transpired here has answered her questions, but she can’t sit here forever. With her needle in hand, she trots down the steps, takes one last look towards the stage…

...and immediately bumps into Grimm.

She, the huntress always one step ahead of her prey, didn’t even see this giant of a bug step into her path. She squeaks, and he laughs at that: a low sound like the rumble of thunder. There hasn’t been a thunderstorm in Hallownest in ages. Hornet jumps back as if struck, weapon at the ready.

“Ah, ah. So eager to dance.” Grimm leans forward with a hand splayed over his chest. Each finger is tipped with a claw that could easily render a bug’s flesh. If not for the bright, distracting scarlet of his thorax, he could have easily passed for a hunter of Deepnest, or even the Ancient Basin. How strange that she meets him as a traveling performer. He catches her staring, and offers his hand with a toothy grin.

“Yet so timid...” he says, almost to himself, when she doesn’t take his hand. He laces his fingers together. “Was the performance to your liking?”

Hornet returns her needle to her back. “It was fine. Who are you, and why have you come here? There’s no market to be made in this fading town.”

“Perhaps not. I’m here for what lies beneath.” Grimm gestures to the floor, as if the wealth of Hallownest were mere inches beneath the floorboards. “I am Grimm, the master of this troupe. The lantern was lit, and we were summoned by knight fair and small, to consume the flames of Hallownest’s fall. We harvest the nightmares of long-dead lands, and feed the heart.”

A single word rolls out of Hornet’s mouth, bitter as medicine. “Scavengers.”

“No ecosystem is complete without them, child.” Grimm stretches to full height. He easily towers over Hornet, who barely comes up to his waist. She’s forced to crane her neck back to make eye contact.

“You’ve come to pick the bones of sacred Hallownest clean,” Hornet says with narrowed eyes, “like a vandal dressed in silk. I won’t allow you to do as you please.”

“There is no point in such abrasiveness. I assure you, we will not be leaving until we have what we seek.” Grimm gestures for her to follow. “The least I can do is escort a lady out.”

Hornet follows begrudgingly, for where else would she go? Further inside? She was planning to leave, anyway. His civility feels almost condescending, as if he’s showing off how much more refined he is than her. He sweeps open the curtain and gestures to the windswept roads of Dirtmouth.

“’Till we meet again.” He sweeps her out into the open, and again the stars erupt in her eyes. This time, however, they do not fade: they g row bigger and brighter, searing her vision with aching red. She turns around and tries to say something, but her own sudden movement unbalances her, and she goes tumbling to the earth.

* * *

The lumafly lamp above the bench rudely awakens Hornet with its light. The moment she’s awake, she glares at it and rubs her eyes. Outside the pool of light that is Dirtmouth’s resting area, the rest of the town is impossibly dark. The Grimm Troupe sits to the side of the town with feigned innocence, and Hornet scowls at that too.

“How are you feeling?” someone asks. Hornet tosses a glance over her shoulder, and sees a mosquito perched on the other end of the bench. Next to her is the beetle from before. To her left is the elderly bug who had tried to speak to her when she first arrived. Hornet feels disgusted with herself when she checks her back for her weapon. These are just normal bugs, but she’d still feel vulnerable if she was unarmed.

“I am fine.” Hornet checks the pockets of her cloak. Nothing is missing. “What happened?”

“You just passed out in front of that tent,” says the mosquito, propping an elbow on her knee. “One of those weevils in the front was poking at you, so the Elderbug went to get help.”

The gears in Hornet’s head begin to turn. “Did you, perchance, see me enter?” she asks.

“No, no,” says the Elderbug, shaking his head. “You walked right up to it as if in a trance, and passed out. I would have carried you myself, but these old arms aren’t what they used to be. I’m sorry...”

“I appreciate your assistance, nonetheless,” Hornet replies, bowing her head respectfully to the other bugs. Still, passing out without even realizing it is troubling. There’s a strange twinge in her chest, like a warm hand firmly grasping her heart.  Grimm’s words are already fading from her memory, but there are a few she manages to catch. Namely, the description of the summoner: a knight fair and small. There’s only one bug in Hallownest who fits that description, and the idea that they’re somehow involved in this isn’t much of a surprise. This is just another item on the list of strange things that have happened since they showed up in Hallownest.

“I cannot vouch for the safety of that tent.” Hornet pushes herself off the bench. The last dregs of sleep still cling to her, making her sluggish. “Take care going near it. I am off to investigate this matter further.”

She backs away with a polite bow, and  then heads off to the old well. For the sake of Hallownest—and her own peace of mind—she hopes the little Ghost hasn’t gone in over their head.


	2. Chapter 2

The Howling Cliffs were cold. It was, in its own right, a part of the wastelands the little Vessel had traveled in from. Now that they had gotten a taste of the warmth Hallownest could offer, they wanted to protect themselves from the chill that had been their constant, lifelong companion.

It couldn’t be helped that they had to toe the line between safety and oblivion, if it meant they’d discover something useful. At the very fringes of the cliffs, where the wind pushed them back as if to say ‘I don’t want your company anymore, either’, they had found a King’s Idol clutched in the claws of a dried-out corpse. Bugs who had tried to leave the Hallownest, only to succumb to the winds, starvation, or the spears that littered the dusty plains. There was a Dream Root, and the Vessel had great fun chasing down its essence. They fought a ghost, and afterwards stumbled exhausted into a den where a kind bug had taught them a special attack with their nail.

Those events are all their own stories in their own right. It was the strange tunnel and the even stranger lamp inside that is today’s focus. The Vessel was cold. Their little hands were numb around the handle of their nail, and they had struck open a loose part of the wall to find shelter. It was only a little bit warmer by the virtue of not having the wind striking at them from every angle.

They went in so deep that the wind became nothing but a distant echo, and that’s when they saw the lamp. It was more like a torch, flared at the top like a gnarled hand. Smaller versions of itself dotted the hall. The Vessel, ever curious about Hallownest’s architecture, noted that the columns and ceiling here were more like a loopy cursive than the thin scrawl of the King’s infrastructural handwriting.

At the bottom of the torch was a grate full of coals, the very sight of which sent the Vessel hopping about and flapping their hands. Coals! They could strike up a fire with this, but when they tried so and nothing happened, they quickly deflated. Maybe there was some tinder in the back they could use.

Deeper inside, the grandeur of the main hall faded away into the same tumbling, jagged rocks everywhere else in the cliffs. The ceiling was low, and with the moisture dripping from the ceiling, the Vessel thought that the corpse should be in a greater state of disrepair. The nondescript bug, with its stitched up hood and mask, was perfectly dry and stiff. The Vessel prodded at it with their stubby paws, and then took out the Dream Nail. Handy little tool, good for the roots that gave them essence and for reading bugs’ thoughts.

They struck the corpse with the Dream Nail, but it had no final thoughts. Even stranger to them was the color of its essence: bright, brilliant red that almost reminded them of that pretty lady. Hornet, they believe her name was. But there was nothing else of value in this room, so they shrugged and returned to the torch. The red essence was still floating around, but they ignored it as they tried to light the coals once more.

The Vessel didn’t know what they were bringing into Hallownest when all the torches burst into life. They were just cold. That they could kneel before the flames and warm their hands was all they needed to worry about.

* * *

The silent little grub the Troupe Master entrusted the Vessel with makes them overall optimistic. Like most newly-hatched, they are already able to fly around, though doing so for long periods of time exhausts them. The Vessel has remedied this a sling out of some long-dead noble’s cloak (tearing a long strip off, really) and using it to carry the child on their back. Their little body is feverish, but they show no signs of illness and even nuzzle the back of their caregiver’s head as they walk along. The Vessel takes them through an atrium that, many long years ago, was a favorite among families with young children. Now, instead of flowers and shrubbery in the planters, there are overflowing pools of water fed from gashes in the ceiling.

The Vessel steps under an awning of what was once a cafe, and in that space hollowed out by disease and civil unrest long past, they set up camp. It’s something they’ve been forced to do, since the child can’t travel for as long without getting hungry or fussy. The ‘Grimmchild’, the Troupe Master had called them, which is a mouthful and probably temporary anyway. They mewl helplessly when the Vessel takes them from their back. They are half-blind, nameless, and now lying on a ruined cushion. The best things the Vessel can give them are the scarlet flames that Grimm has directed them towards. The first one they found in the storerooms. The husks’ orange glow had been invaded by spots of red.

The Vessel pats the child’s belly to calm them. Just as they’re opening the drawstring bag containing their provisions, a familiar voice freezes them cold.

“Little Ghost. I’ve been looking for you.”

Hornet is perched on a lamppost, a spot of blood against a steely blue backdrop. She leaps to the ground as lithe as a dancer, and invites herself into the Vessel’s campsite. ‘Ghost’, she called them. They’re still getting used to the name she gave them, and is ashamed that they haven’t been referring to themselves with it.

When food still doesn’t come, the child grows cranky and begins to howl. The Vessel hurriedly takes out some jerky to pop into their mouth. Though the child is a newborn, they’ve already got a set of sharp fangs which they use to tear apart their meal. Hornet watches this, and shakes her head in disapproval.

“You are the one responsible for those strange travelers in Dirtmouth, no?” she asks them. They...are? But the way she asks makes it sound like a trick question. They don’t say anything, not that they’re able to speak. “Are you aware that you’ve given allowance to a Higher Being to prey upon what remains of this kingdom?”

The Vessel shakes their head. Lighting the torch was an accident. They’re very sorry.

“I have spent years trying to keep out vandals and looters, protecting the sanctity of Hallownest’s corpse, and you’ve gone and dashed it all to pieces. There is no guarantee he will treat these ruins with respect.”

Hornet’s words are not accompanied by the usual tics of frustration. No head-shaking, gesturing, not even a frown. Her gaze is so icy that the Vessel shivers a bit. They give the child another strip of meat, and try to recall Grimm’s words. They were meant to collect scarlet flames to feed the child. They’re very sorry. They try to apologize, but they can only manage a few pathetic puffs of air.

She takes notice of the child then, and scowls. “Do not forget what you came here to do.”

The Vessel jumps up to follow her when she turns to leave, like a beautiful red flag being hoisted up and away. They miss her by an inch, and fall face-first into a puddle.

When they lift their mask, water is streaming from the holes in their sockets and the child is crying from having been left alone. The Vessel balls their hands into fists, and stalks back to tend to their charge. They did something wrong, and now the pretty girl is mad at them. They’re such an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this chapter finished for a while, but I was debating on whether to add more to it or not. I've been so tired lately (as usual)! If this fic seems similar to cagnition's, it's because we share some of the same headcanons. I've got some of my own personal ones that I'd like to implement in this fic. So business as usual ->-


	3. Chapter 3

The first Grimmkin Hornet encounters is in Greenpath: a shock of red against a sea of viridian. She’s surprised to see a member of Grimm’s audience in Hallownest proper. Given its origins, she would be remiss as to ignore its presence. She creeps through the undergrowth after it, keeping a hand on her needle. It wanders without any clear purpose, bobbing just out of reach of the infected Mosskin and knights on endless patrol, more of a ghost than the little knight is.

She comes out of hiding when the audience member nears the toothed entrance of the another hunter’s territory. If it goes past there, it won’t be her prey anymore.

Of course—of course! However silently she moves, the creature still hears her drop down from the ceiling. It startles off with a burst of speed she wasn’t expecting, and is left cursing outside the Hunter’s domain. She could go in after it, but she wouldn’t be allowed to kill it. Rather, she doesn’t want to risk getting caught. It took a lot of patience for her to get the Hunter to respect her stomping grounds and stay out of the lowest levels of Hallownest. Her half of the deal was to, essentially, get off his lawn. The whole ordeal had bittered the blood between them, and she doesn’t want to think further on it right now.

Hornet only worries for a moment before she makes up her mind. He won’t mind if she just pokes in for a few minutes. At worst she’ll have to fight him off or run, and she’s faster than him. Still, she keeps to the undergrowth, uncomfortably aware of how much she stands out. Even without her red cloak—dull as it may be—her gleaming white shell might as well tell the Hunter ‘Here I am!’.

But even someone like him wouldn’t last against a Higher Being. The anxiety Grimm causes her runs deeper than she can explain. Her own father was outwardly benevolent, but he too fed on the kingdom in his own way, simply by presiding over it. For all she knows, Grimm could be as dangerous as the Old Light. There was something so familiar about his magic performance, and she had been disoriented after leaving his tent. Though she remembered what had transpired inside, she got the feeling that she was forgetting something important.

Or, it could just be the act of another selfish god, meddling with bugs’ minds.

Hornet stabs her needle into the earth, and vaults up onto a ledge. When she looks into the clearing, her eyes widen.

The audience member is in tatters, like a cloth doll that was loved a little too much. Floating just above its cracked mask is a ball of scarlet flame, dancing angrily among the wreckage. She almost doesn’t see the Hunter, ever concealed with his moss cloak.

‘ _Wait. Before you leave—here.’_

‘ _What’s this? A bell? But if I wear this, it’ll scare everything away...’_

‘ _Exactly. Now get going.’_

‘ _But…!’_

Of course she didn’t hear him kill it. He valued stealth among all else. Assuming she’s not needed here, she turns to leave, but then notices one of his arms sticking out from under his disguise. How careless. Being too small to simply tap him on the shoulder, she strides over and kicks him in the arm. He grunts and twitches his fingers, but does not react any further.

Asleep? But why? And then Hornet sees the essence, a scarlet mockery of the Dream Roots, floating off him. This only confuses her further, but now she has been soaked through with cold dread. That bug must have done something to him before he killed it. The fire it left behind, she quickly deduces, could be one of those flames that Grimm is here to consume. But that bug was clearly brought here by the Troupe.

The more she thinks, the less sure she is. All the while, the scarlet flame flickers menacingly behind her. Hornet keeps to the edge of the clearing when she leaves, not wanting to get near it lest something happens to her, too.

Outside the Hunter’s lair, she dithers, unsure which way to go. All at once she feels small again, lost in the glittering halls of the White Palace, blinding light, no clear reason for her own presence. She breaks into a run and doesn’t stop until she’s at the Stag Station, where she strikes the bell. But no one comes. She strikes it again and again, until the bell comes flying off its post and strikes the opposite wall.

The stag doesn’t come. He’s probably just busy, and what does it matter that one bug fell into a strange sleep? That was the line of thinking of a lot of bugs prior to Hallownest’s fall, the nobles especially. They had money and were save in their spires, thinking that the latest epidemic would never reach them. It’s probably just something from the Fungal Wastes, brought over by those mantises, but Hornet’s mother knew better, and Hornet knows better now.

The childish, recurring idea that she ought to wake her mother surfaces, and Hornet holds it under the waters of its mind until it stops thrashing. She must be desperate to be thinking that again. Yes, very desperate indeed. Hornet retrieves the bell and hangs it back up. The sick feeling in her stomach persists all the way out of Greenpath, and into the city. If there’s any more evidence of Grimm’s tampering, she’s bound to find it there.

Today the city is draped in a cold mist, so that only the eyes of the infected are visible. Hornet stakes a flying sentry on her way across a wide gap between spires, and the momentum from kicking off it is enough to get her safely to the other side. As the unfortunate bug plummets to its death, Hornet sets about cleaning her needle. In the City of Tears, all she needs to do is hold it under the rain, and it’ll wash away. There are red streaks mixed in with the usual orange goop, however, and the sight of it almost makes her drop her weapon. She stumbles forward and catches it before it can slide off the edge of the balcony, and she stays there, breathing heavily with rain pouring down her shell.

The infected bug has probably been washed away by now, so there’s no use checking its corpse. The next best thing is to go find another one, but for some reason, the very idea of it exhausts her. She draws herself up and staggers inside, clutching her needle against her like a favorite toy. She’s soaked all the way through, and cold enough to feel like the Void Sea itself. There’s no longer any electricity in the spires, but she’s able to start a fire easily enough with some old paintings. No matter how decrepit Hallownest gets, she is never able to bring herself to burn the books. Paintings? Papers? If they’re of nobles, long-dead and obsolete, she doesn’t feel so bad. It’s the books she can’t bring herself to touch.

She hangs her cloak up to dry, and sits in front of the crackling fire with an old, discarded cloak wrapped around her for warmth. No, books are too valuable to burn. In the bygone days of her childhood, there was a whole shelf of them in the White Palace’s nursery. All of them are lost now, but there may yet be some important information in the City of Tears, should anything resembling society emerge from this kingdom’s corpse.

Or, at the very least, it should all be preserved as well as possible or rot away on its own. Hornet leans sideways onto what was probably a nice-looking cushion once, and it only takes a few minutes to fall asleep.

Hornet shakes herself awake to see an out-of-focus, grainy version of the room she had fallen asleep in. She rubs her eyes, bleary and confused by the red light coming from the center of the room. There’s a large something weighing her down, dark and soft. It’s a pelt, she discovers, when she sits up.

After her initial visit to the tent, she can easily piece together that she’s in a dream. Not even the Infection could change the City of Tears so drastically, and to a state that she can’t bear to look at. It has the appearance of something swallowed by a great beast, and instead of being digested, melded with its insides. The worst part is how vivid it feels. She turns from the window and puts her face in her hands.

“What do you want from us?” She peeks through her fingers at the bug sitting across from her, voice laced with all the venom her mother would have had. “We’ve been through enough. How could you inflict this upon us?”

“My dear, I’m simply unearthing what was already there. All of this is in you as well.” Grimm reaches out to her, but she slaps his hand away.

“Don’t!” She swears that, when he draws back, he looks hurt. So what. So many more bugs will be hurt because of him. “You’ve done enough already. Just leave.”

“I cannot. Not until your sibling finishes the ritual.” Grimm puts a hand to his cheek, eyes closed thoughtfully. “Our dance is not yet finished. The child is not yet grown.”

“You--” If Hornet were awake, she’d be more surprised, but dreams have a way of making everything seem normal. She shakes her head to clear it of the fog. Grimm shouldn’t known something so personal about her. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I know many things,” Grimm answers with a sly smile. “About this kingdom, and its gods, past and present.”

Hornet stands up. At least in the dream she is fully dressed, though her cloak is now the same crimson that seems to permeate her surroundings. Higher Beings are all the same, even the benevolent White Lady in her gardens: always speaking cryptically, never getting to the point. But, come to think of it, has she not been the same with little Ghost? Do they feel the same frustration? She has come to think that they are not as empty as she once presumed.

“I won’t let you do as you please.” Hornet jabs a finger at him. “I’ve worked too hard. I won’t let you. Not some coward who won’t even speak to me outside of a dream...”

The waking world crashes over her like a wave, and she awakens where she last left herself: in a cool blue room with a dying fire, alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been exhausted all week! Because of the corona virus, my school is moving all classes online until April or through April, I think?? But I'm going to be busy for a while anyway because I have like two projects and also my second class just started sooooo updates for all my works will be very slow for a while. That's also why I haven't posted any art lately, either. Anyway I'm pretty much writing this fanfic by the seat of my pants, and I think it's starting to turn into a lowkey power struggle between Grimm & Hornet, but of course since it's a ship fic and I'm a hopeless romantic, they're going to be all kissing and lovey-dovey by the end. Thanks everyone for your patience!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for violence/blood/stabbing, etc.

When Hornet visits Dirtmouth next, she leaves her luggage by the old well and peeks into every occupied building. She visits the small beetle’s house first, and almost startles when she sees her drowsing. The absence of any nightmare essence calms her, but just as she’s about to leave, she spots something on the wall: an illustration of little Ghost. The beetle, asleep and blissfully unaware, is snuggled against a life-sized plush of them. Hornet decides that she won’t go back here unless absolutely necessary.

The fly’s shop is small and cramped. She stands in the doorway and sees that he is awake and well, and she leaves while he’s asking if she wants to buy anything. The map shop has also been left untouched by the Troupe. If anything, the mosquito at the counter looks bored.

“Hi, dear,” she says when Hornet enters. “Are you feeling better?”

Hornet immediately leaves. She ignores the lady calling after her, and Elderbug watching from his spot by the bench. Her luggage, that sack she brought up with her. That’s all she needs now. It’s heavy, and she has no choice but to drag it across the ground towards the tents. The steeds outside shuffle uneasily at her approach, and at the fierce glare on her face.

The musician’s masked face peeks through the tent opening. That awful accordion music grates on her already frayed nerves. It’s obvious in her stilted gait, the way her pedipalps rub together when he says, “The Master is busy right now.”

“I don’t care. Bring him out here.”

The musician sweeps open the curtain, and gestures for her to come in. Hornet stakes the tip of her needle into the ground. “I didn’t say ‘let me in’,” she snaps. The musician lets the curtain fall and retreats with hunched shoulders. Though he doesn’t return for a while, Hornet remains where she is in stern, silent vigil. She knows that if she goes back inside, she’ll be throwing herself at the mercy of the Troupe Master. The wind tugs at her cloak like a child demanding to be taken inside, and she still doesn’t budge.

Hornet is just beginning to grow impatient when the curtains part, and Grimm steps out. The musician is standing warily behind him, in the safety of the dark and its papered walls. This is technically the first time she has met him in person, and he towers over her looking far more real and menacing than her nightmares. He almost doesn’t look like a bug. If he just had some fur, he would be more like a creature from the horror stories she heard as a child.

‘They swoop down from the sky and snatch up little bugs to eat live,’ Her mother had told her, ‘It is just as the stories say, but fear not: they cannot reach us underground.’

And here Hornet is, above ground, inches from being snapped up. Grimm suddenly bends at the waist, hand over his chest and a wicked grin on his fangs.

“Ah, ah, clever little spider, waiting for me to come out instead of coming in,” he croaks with laughter. “Did you sleep well?”

“I didn’t come here for small talk.” Hornet’s voice doesn’t feel like her own. Seeing Grimm in person feels like seeing a husk she swears she recognized, but she can’t put her finger on it.

She shoves the bag between them, and yanks away its bindings. A handful of small, soggy corpses that immediately start leaking on the pavement. They were already ballooned up from Infection, but now there’s red leaking from their eye sockets and joints. Grimm’s eyes widen.

“Ohhh. The fruits of the ritual have--”

Hornet’s patience runs out. “Your damned _ritual_ has brought about a second plague!” she explodes. “There are innocent bugs who have fallen into asleep and won’t wake up, just like the Infection that already killed this Kingdom!”

Her voice raises in pitch, drawing the attention of the townsfolk. She slaps the pavement with her needle for emphasis. “You have come into Hallownest diseased. I want you out, _now_.”

“This is bloodletting,” Grimm explains, still with that infuriating smile, gesticulating slowly. “To purge this kingdom of its nightmares, we must first bring them to the surface. Yours as well. Your heart is very ill--”

Again he is interrupted, by the sting of the needle in his arm. Hornet, shaking, drives the tip of her weapon in deeper. Grimm’s eyes widen and take on a feral quality; he hisses and snarls, catching the weapon despite it cutting into his palm.

“The ritual will not be interrupted, and neither will I.” He’s close, too close, connected to her by puncturing steel. Hornet, face to face with his maw, goes ashen inside. “If you are so eager to dance, then let’s take this inside.”

He lunges and grabs her wrist, dragging her towards the tent opening, an event horizon past which Hornet would have nothing to defend herself. She shrieks and bites his wrist hard enough to taste his boiling blood. Her mouth burns, but he lets go. When she runs, he pursues. Her first thought is to go down the old well, and then into the Temple, but what safety would that provide? She would be putting Dirtmouth in danger just by running past it. Possibly the Hollow Knight, too: little Ghost has already broken at least one of the seals, was it the Teacher or the Watcher?

Hornet goes in the opposite direction, towards the cliffs, and this time she doesn’t even bother with her needle. She thinks she hears someone calling after her. Not Grimm—the lady from the shop? The Elderbug? There’s no time to stop. She scrambles up the cliff face and hears rocks crumbling after her, waves of heat warning her of her adversary’s proximity. She reaches the top and races to King’s Pass without looking back, hoping that if she just keeps looking ahead he’ll be gone.

Claws rake at her cloak and she tears free, sacrificing some of her worn red garment in the process. There! A crevice through which he cannot follow. She scrambles inside, dragging her weapon with her, and turns back to see how far he can fit. His arm plunges in after her, stopping abruptly at the shoulder. If she were to slide even an inch closer, he would be able to grab her. She looks around wildly in her newfound prison, and miraculously, there’s a tunnel leading upwards. The remnants of some old, burrowing bugs, no doubt. She scrambles up, and emerges silently from the ceiling. Despite her caution, Grimm immediately looks up.

He is a Higher Being, after all, and that puts Hornet at a disadvantage. She needs to put herself on the offensive, and fast. Grimm bends at the knees, ready to jump, but Hornet launches herself first. Her needle is parried by a twist of fabric, or wing, twisted around Grimm’s arm and sturdy as a piece of armor. Hornet kicks off his arm and summons forth a flurry of silk. Rather than one swift stab, she intends to lash away at him until he relents.

He skitters backwards and flares his wings—those are wings, not a cloak. He casts flames in her direction with a gesture, still appearing magnificent and flourished despite his clear rage. Hornet dodges the first two flames and runs straight into the third one, and when she recovers, he has disappeared. From behind she hears crackling stone, and moves away just in time. Grimm’s wings are buried in the ground, coming up from odd places and forcing Hornet into an uneven dance.

Her carapace is seared and hurting from the flames. One strike from him alone is almost enough to bring her to knees. Her desperation brings out brute strength she thought only her mother was capable of: her needle, impaling Grimm through his gut and coming out the other side in a sick split of chitin. She drives her weapon in and they’re both screaming. Her tympanum are ringing and when she pushes him to the ground, she swears she’s going to go right through it and to the center of the earth.

A pool of scarlet blood fans out beneath Grimm like a second pair of wings. “ Of all the Higher Beings I have met, you are by far the most pitiful,” he rasps. “You are an ignorant grub, meddling in what you do not understand, denying what is inevitable. That I was able to be summoned to this kingdom speaks volumes of its infertility, the salting of its soil--”

“I am not one of you!” Hornet howls, with a boiling heart. “I am Hornet of Deepnest, daughter of Herrah the Beast, and I will not allow any more Higher Beings to come into my home and gut it as they wish!”

Grimm coughs up scorching blood, dark against his carapace and Hornet’s cloak. She drives the needle in deeper. This mortal weapon cannot snuff out an immortal life, but she is as good as damned if she doesn’t try. Her whole body is shaking. He’s beneath her, at her mercy, but she does not feel any more in control than when he had attacked her. 

Something in his expression has changed, noticeable enough that even Hornet can see it. His eyes are blown wide. Has the extent of his injuries finally hit him?

“Ahh. How noble...and pure.” Grimm takes the handle of the needle, easily engulfing Hornet’s hand and wrist. He wrenches upwards, and the weapon comes out with a wet sound and a warm splash of blood.

“I am not pure.” Hornet tries to pull away, but he catches her other arm. “That’s enough! You’ve already lost.”

Grimm’s words come out with bubbles of blood, but his grip remains steadfast. “I adore you, creatures of sleepless nights: insomniacs, dreamers with muddled minds, tormented souls crying out from nightmare.”

The words stir within her a memory that has grown murky over the decades. Hornet catches glimpses of the Palace nursery, yet another home lost to her.

“Long-legged spiders stealing down the stairs and breathing in tandem with their slumbering houses,” Grimm continues. “Boiler rooms watching up the basement stairs, shadow worlds that engulf unoccupied rooms.”

It was a book. Its cover was dark blue, almost black, with stars on the cover. It was about the nighttime, and she had had difficulty learning to read but she had tried so hard with that one, begging someone, anyone to teach her. It was a one-of-a-kind book that, along with the rest of the nursery library, could not be found anywhere else in Hallownest. She knows. She remembers being in the city with her mother and looking. What was the book called?

Hornet gapes at him. “ How do you know that story?”

He faints before he can answer. Though his hand has fallen to his chest, Hornet still feels the residual warmth of it in her chitin. With her anger quelled, she now realizes what she has done. With no one’s aid, she has stabbed a Higher Being into unconsciousness. As much trouble as he has given her, she can’t just  _leave_ him here to bleed out. She’s not a monster.

Hornet rubs the sides of her head. “What am I supposed to do now?”


	5. Chapter 5

In the chaos of it all, Hornet had forgotten that she just left several corpses in Dirtmouth. They were at the fringes of it, yes, but still inside the town proper. Coming back dragging the bloody, unconscious body of a Higher Being does nothing to assuage the already frightened townsfolk. She must look like a terror, all bristled and covered with blood and bruises.

Before any of them can approach or speak to her, she drops Grimm outside the tent and runs for the well. No one dares follow her into the ruined kingdom, especially not the Crossroads, now festering with Infection once more.

Grimm awakens in the tent, tucked into his plush bed with bandages wrapped around his middle: proof that it wasn’t just a nightmare. He groans from the weight of his injuries, and is stopped from sitting up by the musician’s gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Brumm,” he gasps. His carapace is burning. “Where is she?”

“Gone off somewhere. Mmm. It was not wise to leave the tent to fight.” Brumm shakes his head as he says this. “If you had retreated, she would have been forced to follow you inside or give up.”

“I will not run like a coward. Not from that petulant little...” Grimm sighs and drags his hands down his face. For all the trouble she has caused him, he can’t bring himself to be angry. Not for long. Let her think what she likes: it will not stop him from feasting on the residual terror of Hallownest. It is not malice or any goodness in his heart, but pure need. Instinct, even.

“Mrm.” Brumm fluffs the pillows and helps Grimm sit up. Divine isn’t here; she’s probably ‘working’ on one of the charms the summoner brought in for her. No matter. Brumm, when he was the only troupe member, had pulled Grimm back from the brink of death many a time. Today, he’s only changing Grimm’s bandages and applying antiseptic. The wound has already sealed both front and back, but the chitin is still weak and scabby. He has been rendered even weaker than when he first arrived.

His own feelings for the young princess aside, a spider with god blood in her would give him an unfathomable amount of Nightmare Essence. With that kind of power, he would be able to do just about anything he wants.

And yet his thoughts return to her. Beautiful little creature in red. The sight of her brings back memories from one of his many past lives, little joys that have fallen further into the cracks with each incarnation. That something of Hallownest has survived, that she remembers the words of that old story, is more than he could have asked from her.

Brumm offers him a cup of something cold and green-tinted, which Grimm reluctantly drinks down. Being an ageless creature does not stop him from disliking bitter things.

“Where did she go?” he asks again, and the poor bard just shrugs helplessly. Hallownest is vast, and she could be at the bottom of it by now. With his injuries, he can’t afford to leave unless it’s a direct beeline to her—and he no longer knows her enough to know where she could have gone.

He closes his eyes and focuses on looking into Hallownest, past the physical layers, but the years have given it a thick coating of miasma. Without the Wyrm’s fastidious rule, Hallownest has become a power vacuum that swallows all potential usurpers.

Grimm has his work cut out for him.

He bides his time drinking more of that awful medicine and weaving some thread in his pocket. Not even an hour passes before he hears Brumm speaking to someone at the entrance, and the patter of little feet. The summoner climbs up and into the loft, with the Grimmchild perched between their horns. Grimm straightens up in bed and hastily draws his wings over his bandages.

“Returned so soon?” he asks. The summoner tilts their head forward, sending the Grimmchild spilling onto the blankets. They’ve apparently been too sluggish to fly on their own, weighed down by a hearty meal of nightmare flames and the beginnings of their first shed.

“Ahh, very good, my friend.” Grimm snaps his fingers. In a burst of flame and the blink of an eye, the Grimmchild has molted. Their bulb-shaped head now sports Grimm’s horns in miniature, and their body lengthened, still with a hatchling’s chub. They mewl and squeal and burrow themselves into Grimm’s arms, soaking in their father’s praise.

“Henceforth they shall be your deadly companion in that labyrinth below.” He rolls the Grimmchild onto their back and fondly strokes their belly. “And such an adorable one, too, yes you are.”

To the summoner, who stands in silent stillness: “There is scattered essence yet to be found. When child begins to molt again, return to me, and we shall—ah.”

Grimm perks up. “Ah, ah, just one moment.” He puts a hand on the summoner’s shoulder before they can leave. “It has just occurred to me that you are very knowledgeable of these depths, to have returned to me so easily.”

The summoner nods. Grimm throws the blankets off his lap and, still holding the Grimmchild, swings his legs over the side of the bed. “Truth be told I have an errand to run down there, and I do hate traveling alone.”

He stands up, but the pressure in his legs somehow translates to a stabbing sensation in his gut. He pitches forward, but catches himself on one of the columns. The summoner has skittered out of the way, clearly nervous about being collapsed on. They keep their eyes on him even after he has balance himself, and returned the child to them. It is a mercy that Grimm’s wings are still in working order, even if floating down makes his back twinge. It hurts far less than walking, though, so he suspects this will be his primary mode of transportation for now.

Brumm, of course, doesn’t let them leave without voicing his protests.

“Master, you shouldn’t go outside in your condition,” he says gravely. The accordion music has squealed to a halt. “Please, reconsider.”

Grimm puts a hand on Brumm’s shoulder and squeezes, hard. “I will not be hindered by the pinprick of a spider’s needle,” he growls. His legs are shaking from the effort of holding himself up, and before Brumm can stare at them for long, Grimm h isses low. “Listen to me.  Her cooperation is paramount to completing the Ritual. She did not hesitate before to dispatch me, she will do anything in her power to stop us if she sees us as a threat.”

“You have made your intentions clear, have you not?” Brumm asks, bewildered.

“Yes, as transparent as I could, yet she still found reason to lift her blade.”

“Then how do you mean to win her over?”

Grimm gives pause. The summoner is standing between the two, holding the Grimmchild, looking back and forth between them. He realizes that he hasn’t really ‘won anyone over’, not in an honest way. He had manipulated young Nymm into his troupe at the start, and took advantage of Divine’s (original name forgotten, unfortunately) desperation. Hornet is clearly not naive, nor hurting for a way out of her situation. He taps a finger to his chin, deep in thoughts that don’t lead to any particular solution.  He simply does not know her well enough to improvise.

“I have it handled,” he says decidedly, and finally lets Brumm go. The bard rubs his shoulder, no doubt aching from so tight a grip. Turning to the summoner: “Well then, my friend, let us not loiter.”

He ushers them out of the tent, limping, and into Dirtmouth proper. The apprehension and fear in the air is enough for him to taste: sharp and bitter. There are still stains of orange and scarlet between the cobblestones where Hornet had dragged her catch to his tent, but for the most part, it has been scrubbed clean. No trace of the corpses. Likely they were given a proper burial. The summoner, to his impatience, approaches one of the storefronts.

“Let us not linger,” Grimm reminds them, gently steering them away. The summoner looks back to the fly lingering in the doorstep, and waves apologetically. “I do not have time for detours, we are going straight down. Now, concerning my errand...I must again ask for your assistance.”

Just outside the well, he leans forward and lowers his voice. The summoner and Grimmchild gather close to listen. “Whilst you collect the scarlet flames, I must ask that you keep an eye out for that young lady in red. The one with the needle. Do you know her? Yes, of course you do. Good. It is... _imperative_ ...that I locate her at once. The Nightmare Kin are very powerful, and with them wandering around who-knows-where, she is in great danger if she stumbles across one, no?”

The summoner nods and clenches their little fists to their chest, so earnest that Grimm  feels bad for telling such a bald-faced lie. Hornet almost killed him; the masked, disposable members of his troupe would hardly lay a scratch on her with her strength and speed.

“Then we must locate her at once. I’m sure you’re aware of her haunts.” Grimm gestures loosely. “Even nomads have their favored places, and you’re very bright, I’m sure.”

The summoner, after briefly consulting their map, wraps their fingers around Grimm’s thumb and leads him to the well. The innocent gesture is enough for Grimm  feels genuine guilt. They’ve done nothing but help him, and he’s deceiving them. But, really, he knows no other way to go about this. One does not simply arrive as a stranger, and claim acquaintanceship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing this fic by the seat of my pants, lol  
> I honestly have no idea how to write Grimm, so the fic feels very confused. I try not to put myself down, but the circumstances have made it easy to feel depressed as of late orz


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY, Tiso is kind of dead,

The Colosseum radiates heat, even from a distance. Hornet perches on the ceiling among the belflies, and watches as armored bugs drunkenly sway in and out. Though she has reacted to the Troupe’s appearance in Hallownest with an appropriate amount of frustration, it hasn’t felt real to her until now.

She hasn’t gone inside, but she has seen enough to realize there’s a power struggle going on between gods. A proxy war, even. Most of the bugs are still with sickly orange eyes and swollen carapaces, but there is an increasing amount tainted with Nightmare: red eyes, this time, and popped veins. She hangs from the ceiling and counts them, watches them brawl outside the maw of the Colosseum. Ten, twelve, thirteen. Fifteen? She can see inside, and it is a grisly sight.

Hornet does not want to go inside the Colosseum when there are two infections raging inside. It was bad enough when it was just the Old Light. She lands on the ground and rushes into a hole; on her way down, she hears the shriek of a belfly and the cry of one of the Fools.

Down she goes, nimble as ever, trying to ignore the bodies that fall around her. It’s rotten work coming here, and in the past she had taken to scooping corpses into acid river that runs the length of the canyon. An infected corpse can stay infected for up to two weeks post-mortem, plenty time for a foolish wanderer to get themselves sick. Hornet pushes an armored Fool off a ledge, and watches it sink and dissolve.

She works from the top down, but most of the bodies she sees don’t need her help, and fly past uninterrupted. There’s one she almost misses, a bug with blue armor, blending in with the blue shadows. A feral bug hopping near their body is interrupted with the tip of Hornet’s needle running through their head. There. No more distractions.

“What happened to you?” Hornet asks under her breath. The bug has a large crack in their armor, likely from blunt force trauma. The undamaged shield by their side must have been stronger than whatever killed its owner. She sets it atop their chest and carries them to the ledge, but before she can throw them over with the rest, they _stir_.

* * *

The summoner taps to a word, written on the corner of their map. Grimm leans forward and squints at their awful handwriting.

“’Ghost’?”

The summoner points to the word, and to themselves. “Ah, I see,” Grimm continues. “So that is your name...”

It’s a fitting name for them. The little creature moves so quietly that, if he were not holding their hand, he would have definitely lost them by now. They never quite let go until they found a bench to rest on, though it is Grimm who needs to sit. Exerting himself so soon after injury is not doing him any favors. Even the Grimmchild, an infant, is faster than him.

This could make for an underwhelming ritual dance, if he goes for his standard fare. He leans against the back of the bench and considers a slow waltz. At this angle, he can see outside the Stag Station. The orange pustules have not made it inside, but a warning mist lingers at the doorway. Ghost picked a bad time to summon him. The dust hasn’t settled, so to speak, but on the other hand, the conditions were still right for the troupe to appear. It’s just not ideal.

“Do you know what caused this blight?” Grimm asks, lazily gesturing towards the Infection. Ghost signs ‘no’, and puts their map away. They seem more interested in the Grimmchild than whatever brought Hallownest to its knees. The child, who had been squawking the entire journey, has exhausted themselves and is now sleeping under the bench. Ghost retrieves them from their ill-chosen napping space, and holds them on their lap instead.

The sight of a Vessel, holding their even smaller charge, brings him back. There’s something poetic about how the Wyrm birthed his empty spawn so that Hallownest may be full, but now the children are full while his kingdom is a husk. If there are any left, that is. Ghost is the only one Grimm has seen since coming here, but Wyrms, what a coincidence. Their horns are almost exactly like the one the King chose to be sealed. It certainly makes them more endearing.

It still doesn’t help that there is _so much_ to be done, and he’s hardly in the shape to do it all.

“You are quite the patient one,” Grimm says, resting his elbows on his knees. “I, for one, would not be tarrying for so long if my corporeal form allowed it.”

Ghost tilts their head, a gesture they make when Grimm says something they don’t understand. Their attention is quickly pulled away by the Grimmchild, who is cooing in their sleep. Ghost gently kisses their forehead, and strokes one of their arms until they’ve gone quiet again.

Goodness, they’ve even got the big sibling act down. Grimm feels his brooding instinct begin to swell, and swallows it back down. “Why don’t you go ring that bell over there?” he suggests with a shrug in that direction. “A ride on a stag would allow us to travel in comfort.”

All bugs enjoy convenience. The little Ghost is no exception, or so it would seem. Over the years, Grimm has dealt with summoners of all stripes, and most of them were far more complicated, and often with the potential for great cruelty. It is unreal to see that the current summoner is as simple-minded as a child, who repeatedly strikes the stag station’s bell just for the sound it makes. The Grimmchild squeals happily and joins in on the fun.

Then, all of a sudden, Ghost pulls the Grimmchild into their arms and steps away from the bell. Both bugs look down the tunnel and await the inevitable thunder of stag legs. Even Grimm sits up and looks. The echoing of the bell fades away, but still there is no stag. Ghost tilts their head, and rings the bell again. Still nothing. The Grimmchild struggles away from them with an indignant squeal, and flaps about aimlessly.

“Oh, my.” Grimm holds out his arms for his child to barrel into. “There, there. No need to cry, little dear.”

All the while, Ghost keeps staring down the tunnel, waiting for a stag that will never come. It is of no consequence to Grimm: there still being public transportation was a shot in the dark.

Grimm lurches to his feet, and wonders if he should have brought a cane. He’s prepared to struggle through the inclines and slopes that Hallownest has yet to offer. Ghost hopping onto the tracks and walking into the tunnel is less expected.

“A path is still a path, after all,” Grimm says, following Ghost’s outstretched hand. His voice bounces off the walls. It feels silly, talking to bugs who can’t respond. “Are you certain you will be able to find the young lady?”

Ghost nods vigorously. They step to the side of the road, where bugs of days past eroded the stone into paths that a small bug could walk easily, without fear of being trampled. A small set of stairs leading down, plain metal with no decorations, suggests a maintenance tunnel. Any road, no matter how obscure, is bound to pile up with litter when traveled. Grimm feels like he has stepped into a dollhouse, one with knee-height boarded up doors and tiny dolls in death curls. Ghost swings their nail merrily, sending pale ferns and bits of fence flying, not even sparing a second glance for the perished bugs they pass.

They descend several more stairs and a couple of ladders before Grimm has to sit down again. He gingerly presses against his bandages, displeased to find that they’ve loosened during his exertion. While he busies himself with tightening them, he feels something touch his knee.

“In a moment, my friend,” Grimm reassures Ghost. They shake their head and point to his chest. Grimm forces a smile. “’Tis but a surface wound, one that hit a shallow vein.”

Ghost stares, and though they cannot change their expression, Grimm can _feel_ their disbelief. It comes as a prickly feeling against the back of his hand.

“The young lady and I had an altercation,” he relents. “She’s quite ferocious when angry. I’ve neglected to ask, but how well-acquainted are you with her?”

Ghost makes a ‘so-so’ gesture, and Grimm wonders if it’s a bad idea to pry. He is already involving himself far too deeply, simply by stepping out of his tent. Only now does he realize this. He would have regretted it far more if not for the girl at the end of his path.

“Let’s be on our way.” Grimm rises, and gestures down the tunnel. “Is this where you’ve meant to lead us?”

It can’t be a coincidence that there’s an opening to another stag station up ahead. Grimm, becoming accustomed to his pain, walks ahead of the group and sees a familiar blue haze. The silence, save for the endless fall of rain, is less familiar. He had once known this place to be full of life, but now, the three of them are the only ones on the platform.

They leave the stag station and descend to a lower, flooded platform, keeping clear of the Infected bugs still roaming around. It’s a wonder that the place hasn’t become overrun with mold, even with the constant flow of water. Grimm unconsciously lifts the hem of his cloak—his wings, really—to keep from getting wet. His feet are already a lost cause, and he yearns for somewhere warm and dry.

Ghost, in contrast, walks right into the rain to dispatch a couple of Vengeflies, and then leaps right into the water. They swim towards a gap under the wall, their horned helm bobbing up and down like a life preserver. Grimmchild keeps close, with nary a complaint.

The opening is far too small for Grimm to go under without getting wet, and it’s not a matter of him being sensitive. His bandages will get ruined. He closes his eyes and focuses on what’s on the other side of the wall: a hidden passageway, lined with bugs nesting in the ceiling, in rotting wood.

It was meant to block Hallownest from the sheer cliffs at the edge of the kingdom, a sacred ground from which he can sense the remnants of a powerful and familiar presence. It has become so diluted that Grimm can no longer reconcile it with those halcyon days where he, a much smaller creature, had perched upon the shell of that great beast. The Wyrm, who had tried to make himself grander than any Higher Being, had wound up diminishing himself into nothing.

Grimm thought he had left it all behind, when he left Hallownest, when it fell, and when no one summoned him for years and years. Sometimes, when a kingdom dies—but not often—it erodes into dust and stone and never once sees the Troupe. He thought that was why Hallownest had gone out so quietly. He wished it to be so, for it would have been more forgiving than being locked in a permanent state of decay. It is so like the Wyrm to want to hold onto something, even when it is falling apart in his hands.

He opens his eyes and sees a flurry of ash sweep across the canyon. A moment later, he hears Ghost and the Grimmchild scrambling from a crevice.

“Even in my current state, I still have some tricks up my sleeve,” Grimm says with a wink. The echo of clashing steel draws his attention upwards. The Grimmchild, suddenly curious, tries to fly off towards the sound, and he catches them by the tail. He doesn’t want them startling away the combatants above them, one of whom is the lady herself.

“She’s in a fix,” he announces to the pair, though from where he’s standing, she’s holding her own just fine. “Shall we go fetch her?”


	7. Chapter 7

The infected bug, if Hornet can call him that, must have been a powerful fighter when he was alive. That he met his end here is yet another testament to the Colosseum’s brutality. It also makes her situation frustrating. Only a dead bug could be so rabid, though the foam at his mandibles is red, not orange.

He snaps at her arm, and misses. Hornet draws away from him with a gasp, and thrusts her needle into his leg. When he drops to his knees, she practically flies up the cliff face, past the ledge where she found him. She takes hold of one of the roots protruding from the sediment to steady herself. Far below her, she can still hear the bug’s strangled screams as blood pours from his wound.

Hornet positions herself and rockets downward. The tip of her needle clangs against his shield, which he then slams into her middle before she can reorient herself. As she goes spinning off the edge, she releases a burst of silk, hoping to at least strike him once before she goes down.

When she’s out of his reach, she turns her focus towards catching on to another platform. The one she catches is small, and rocks violently beneath her weight. Then the infected bug lands atop it, sending her careening further down.

This goes beyond him just being a strong bug while alive. His leg is very visibly broken where Hornet had stabbed him, and rather than shamble around on it, he uses his shield as a crutch when he moves. That denotes a level of intelligence that bugs just don’t have anymore when they’ve been taken by the light. It’s almost like he’s still _alive_.

The realization hits her as hard as the platform her head smashes into. In the blink of an eye, she goes from being in relative control of her descent to flailing downwards like a ragdoll. Kingdom’s Edge whirls around her with frightening speed. It’s not the first time she made such a careless mistake in battle, but she only needs to hit her head hard enough one time, and then...

The blunt impact of hard stone and her own shattering body doesn’t come. There is instead something warm and dark that encircles her. In her confusion, she thinks she has fallen straight through the earth and into the Abyss. If she died, it would make sense that that is where she would go. The Void always, in the end, reclaims what came from it. But the Void is not warm, nor does it smell like cinnamon, of all things.

Her head is spinning. Someone presses their palm against her forehead, claws stretching to graze her horns and force her eyes shut.

“My needle,” Hornet groans in protest. Something leaks between her eyes. There’s the sound of clashing steel in the distance. She needs to get her weapon. To go into Hallownest unarmed is a death sentence. Moreover, her needle is precious to her. It was crafted before she was big enough to hold it.

“Be still.” The arm around her back holds her closer when she tries to pull away. “We are both injured.”

“ _You_.” Hornet bristles. “Why are you here?”

“A little ghost--” Grimm’s chest heaves when he coughs, and Hornet feels bandages beneath her fingers. “--A little ghost told me where you might be lurking.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Hornet balls her hands into fists. Why Ghost would agree to go along with the Troupe Master’s whims is a different problem, and she dares not wander into the territory of a Vessel’s nature when there are more urgent matters to attend to.

“Because I believe...we have met before,” Grimm chokes, and then his hand goes limp. Hornet immediately sits up, now on top of him for the second time today. Had their fight really only been this morning? She stares down at the bandages wound about his chest, in mild disbelief that she was the one who did that. She never sticks around long enough to see the effects of her needle.

Hornet looks up to see the little Ghost locked in combat with the maybe-dead, maybe-alive bug. Watching them from a distance is quite different from fighting them herself. Though grateful for their presence, jealousy is still sharp and bitter in the back of her throat. She’s getting rusty.

Or growing tired.

Back to Grimm. “I won’t have you fainting on me again,” she scolds his unconscious body, while unwrapping a skein of silk. She binds it over his wounds thrice, to keep him from bleeding out before she can get him to proper shelter.

Some debris rains down on her from above while she’s tightening his bandages. Stopping to help bugs is going to get her killed one day. Really, it’s Grimm’s fault for giving her so many reasons to pay attention to him. Hornet sighs, and reaches into her cloak for her canteen. When she tips some water onto his face, he winces and tries to squirm away from her.

“Good. You’re awake.” Hornet screws the cap back on, watching as his eyes crack open. “I may be the most pitiful Higher Being you’ve met, but even _I_ am not so frail. If not for the little Ghost, we would have certainly both perished. Can you hear me?”

“Nngh.” Grimm feels around blindly until he has found her hand. Hornet startles at this, but when all he does is hold her, she settles back down. “Princess...”

Hornet properly feels her forehead, and beneath the dried blood, is chipped shell. She can’t recall telling him her title. Ghost couldn’t have known. Her hand moves instinctively to the back of her neck, to the birthmark she only knows of from mirrors and from the say-so of her long-gone parents. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t _want_ to understand. All of the bugs from her past are either alone somewhere or dead. Her head throbs, and when she leans her forehead against the handle of her needle, she only feels air.

“My needle,” she mutters to herself. “I need my needle.”

Grimm tries to sit up, but Hornet gently pushes him back down. She leaves the platform to feel around in the ash—no, the snow. At times like this, she finds it easier to pretend it’s snow and not the decaying body of her father.

She is alerted by the sound of soft footsteps, but when she looks up, it’s just the little Ghost: battered and with a crack down one eye, but alive. The hatchling bobs along behind them, unbothered and unscathed. There is no sign of the infected bug, but there is her needle; the little Vessel has dragged it through the ash back to her.

Hornet sighs and holds out her hand. If she needs these two to help her, what kind of princess is she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm working on the next chapter as I post this LOL I'm just. so excited for grimm and hornet to finally have an actual discussion. Could this be considered slow burn at this point?


	8. Chapter 8

It was unwise of the old travelers to build their camp so exposed to the elements, but as a temporary resting spot, it serves Hornet just fine. She cleans her needle and dabs her forehead with ointment she had made with water from one of the rare springs underground. Once her split shell has healed, she wordlessly offers the jar to the Ghost. They bow their head to sniff, and when it looks like they’re about to eat it, Hornet quickly intervenes.

“Like this, little one.” Hornet smears the paste along the fractured parts of their shell. Her hand lingers on their cheek for a tad too long, and she pulls away, embarrassed. She has saved them once before, but she has done nothing that would make them expect such affection from her.

Ghost doesn’t seem to mind. At least, their body language suggests such. They put their hand to their cheek and continue staring at Hornet, even though she has moved on to the next ‘patient’. Even when slouched on a bench, Grimm exudes the aura of a slumbering beast rather than an injured bug. Hornet sidles next to him, jar in hand, and pats his arm.

“Medicine,” she grunts, when Grimm opens his eyes. He eyes the jar, and she adds, “Your bandages are filthy, too.”

“Ah.” Grimm parts his wings and looks down at the crusty wrappings on his torso. He scoots away from Hornet, before promptly bursting into flames. Hornet holds up an arm to protect herself from the heat, and from the dark ashes that float petal-soft away from him to be chased by the hatchling. One lands on their nose, and they sneeze it off. Even Ghost joins in, hands stretched out and face tilted towards the heavens.

A gust of wind blows it all away, and when the cloud of ash settles, Grimm looks relatively clean. He not only burned away the bandages, but the worst of the scab as well. The Hornet-inflicted stab wound on his chest is small by itself, but falling from a great height caused spiderweb cracks to spread out from it. Hornet winces when she sees it.

It’s a far more awkward affair to tend to Grimm’s wounds. He’s taller than her even when sitting, so she has to stand on the bench. She’d like to be done with this as soon as possible, if only to save herself from burning up as well. Grimm’s carapace is almost hot to touch, and she swears she sees light coming from inside his body.

_It screamed and screamed, even as its shell split, and hot bile bubbled up in its throat. It was agony to even breathe, for pustules had taken up residence in the concave of its chest. Hornet had awoken from the nightmare with a sharp cry and tears streaking her cheeks, forgetting that she was a safe little alcove in Greenpath and not in--_

Hornet draws her hand back as if struck. She feels a hand on her knee and nearly jumps out of her chitin, but it’s just Ghost, staring up at her with those big, blank eyes.

“It’s nothing,” she murmurs, shooing them away. She looks back at Grimm and sees him leaning inches from her face, with a hungry look in his jewel-like eyes. From such a short distance, a pair of slit pupils are just barely visible in the sea of bright scarlet.

“Ah--” Blood goes rushing into Hornet’s shell as Grimm brushes a claw against her cheek. With Ghost, with any other traveler, she always has something to say. Why is it now that she can’t speak? It’s as if she were a hatchling again, struggling to speak and going silent when she was in shock.

The first thing she can think to do is butt her forehead against Grimm’s, startling him away from her. His eyes are still blown wide, and he has his hand on his forehead in an almost childish gesture that makes her giggle behind her hand. Hornet soon sobers up, however, and thrusts the jar out to him.

“Here.” When he takes the jar, she folds her arms and turns away from him. “You were too close, just now.”

“I mean not to pry,” Grimm begins, “but I am highly attuned to certain...negative emotions.”

He reaches behind himself to tend to his back, feeling around for the wound and grimacing when he touches a bruise. “Still, I am glad to have found you. You are a flighty, nervous little creature.”

Hornet jumps to her feet. “I am not _nervous_. I am _cautious_.”

“And line between those two things is very thin, indeed.” Grimm screws the lid back onto the jar, and sets it down with with a gentle _clink_. “Come, sit.”

Hornet becomes aware that both Ghost and the hatchling are watching her intently. She spares them a weary look, and slowly lowers herself back onto the bench. There’s no room left for Ghost or the hatchling, who settle for sitting in front of the bench like children waiting for a story.

It is strange, even considering Ghost a child; they are holder than Hornet, after all. She wonders if they know that.

She puts her face in her hands. She’s very tired.

“I just don’t understand,” is all she can say. Grimm’s hand first brushes against her, and then settles firmly on her shoulder when she doesn’t push him away.

Hornet, though she is only half of a Higher Being, still feels a pressure, or an expectation that Hallownest needs a ruler. Her territorial instincts had flared, aggressive and ugly, at the thought of someone else meddling with her kingdom. There’s good reason for her to feel that way, and to be angry at Grimm for his magic endangering her, the little Ghost, and everyone else below Dirtmouth.

Is it a good idea to just fight him off? Is that not what the Pale King attempted with the Radiance? To push Her away, to claim sole ownership over the subterrane? Both those gods—and everyone around them—had suffered from their mistakes.

How many bugs have suffered because of her?

This might not be a situation that requires brute force. The problem is, Hornet doesn’t know how to do things any other way. There are very few bugs left in Hallownest with whom it is possible to negotiate, or to even have a simple conversation with. The most recent traveler whom she had confronted at the Howling Cliffs, little Ghost—neither of them had seemed particularly interested in fighting until Hornet raised her blade at them.

In a last ditch effort, she tries to remember what her parents had done. The Weavers and the Mantis Tribe, down in the Fungal Wastes, had little need for negotiation and spoke with their nails and needles. It was her father, the Pale King, who was more interested in playing politics.

It’s because of that that she was born at all, it often occurs to her with a bitter sting, though she often imagines a better world where her existence was not necessitated by tragedy.

She lifts her head and tries to make eye contact with Grimm. This proves difficult for her—such was the case even in more peaceful times—and her gaze settles on the cowl of his wings instead.

“Tell me first—where have we met?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing 1k word chapters is proving to be easier on me, though I imagine the next one is going to be longer because it's a flashback and you all know how I love to write about the White Palace! I feel like I'm getting back into the grove of writing after a couple of weeks of feeling down. Thank you to everyone who had shared kind words.


	9. Chapter 9

The line between the Nightmare King and Grimm is hard to draw, and it is easier to consider the both of them two parts of the same whole. The Grimm who keeps his steady gaze on Hornet is not the Grimm who had known Ancient Basin when it was still clean and tended to. He, at the same time, recounts those days clearly, even though he had died and been reborn a hundred times over already. His body is no longer familiar with Hallownest’s howling winds, nor the marbled halls he had once taken up residence in.

The Pale King called Grimm to his Palace with a neatly-written letter on creamy paper, which the Nightmare King brings with him into Hallownest’s glistening depths. He has a hard time believing that the Ancient Basin had never belonged to his old friend: the whole place has been outfitted in pristine white, laced with canals and free of the usual pests that plague the upper levels. Save for the rushing water and his own footsteps, it is utterly silent.

The bridge is a fantastic thing in and of itself, beneath which is the only glimpse to be had of the darkness below. Try as he might, the Pale King cannot control the Void entirely. A battalion of Kingsmoulds and his own pet project are the best he could do.

He finds the Pale King standing at his preferred vista, watching the open, empty cavern as if expecting something to spring from it. Grimm has scarcely stepped out onto the balcony when the King turns around.

It really is impossible to make a grand or unexpected entrance, when your host can gaze into the future. Grimm’s tall red horns nearly touch the ground, he bows so deeply. “Your Majesty,” he rumbles, drawing back to his full height, “what an honor for you to call for me specifically.”

“It is by mere necessity that I summoned you,” the King says, turning back to the landscape before him. “Tell me: when was the last time you performed outside of the Ritual?”

Getting straight to the point as always. Grimm saunters to his side, hands held behind his back. It makes him think: the days of juggling on street corners for the lucky few attuned to the presence of Higher Beings were long gone; so were the days of performing on stage. Duty necessitated that he give up that pastime.

“Many an age,” he says, after a long pause. “Why?”

“You are to take up temporary residence at the Palace, as a court magician.” As usual, the Pale King never just requests things of him. Everything is a command—that’s probably why he makes such a good leader: he isn’t afraid to boss other bugs around. Grimm should be used to this by now, but the absurdity of his request shocks him like a slap to the face.

The moment he recovers, he throws his head back and began to cackle. “Court magician?! Goodness, are you just now realizing that you need to enjoy yourself? Would you like me to dance for you? Shall I pull a coin out from behind your horns?”

The Pale King’s expression is pinched. “You are not here for me, believe it or not, though I am flattered you immediately thought of keeping me company. No. You have not let me finished.”

Grimm wipes a tear from the corner of his eye, doing his best to sober up. The King leads him back into the castle, down winding halls, up and down elevators that scarcely make a noise. Everything is quiet, and everything that makes a noise echoes. It is so different from the Nightmare Realm, where all sounds are absorbed in the patchwork landscape, and there’s always at least one place that is noisy.

Grimm, as much as he enjoys teasing the Pale King, knows not to go any further than a few jokes. The Wyrm is, unfortunately, rather humorless. That automatically makes Grimm best-suited for whatever he has been summoned for.

The King stops outside a door wreathed with fragrant blossoms and delicate ivy. He knocks, and when no one answers, cracks it open. Grimm looks over the top of his head and glimpses, among the flora, a twin bed and toys strewn across the floor.

The King apparently expected someone to be in here, because he groans and slides a hand down his face. “I told her to stay put.”

“Oh,” says Grimm sympathetically. He follows him to the sitting room, which he remembers being reserved for only the King and Queen. Grimm had always been more content to bothering the King in his workshop or study, as mischievous Higher Beings are wont to do. He was also wise enough to not bother the White Lady.

The King pushes the door open, and there’s the Queen herself, sitting at her tea table. Across from her is the Pure Vessel, taller than he remembers it, with its head bent forward in solemn disinterest.

“Daddy!” squeals the tiny hatchling in the White Lady’s hand. She squirms away from her to toddle across the carpet. Grimm’s eyes widen with recognition. It is the Gendered Child, titled so for the unique trait she possesses out of all of her siblings. No longer is she the fussy newborn swaddled in her father’s arms. Grimm fondly remembers that encounter; it is such a rare and novel occurrence to see a newborn god.

The Pure Vessel doesn’t even register as a Higher Being to him, much less a living bug. Their ‘birth’ doesn’t count.

“I told you to stay in the nursery,” scolds the Pale King. He puts a hand to her chest to keep her from advancing, and she swings her little arms helplessly.

“Wanted to take Howl for tea,” the child whines. There are already tears forming in her wide black eyes. _There’s_ the teary infant Grimm remembers.

“The _Pure Vessel_ is meant to be training right now.” When the child sniffles, the King sighs and scoops her into his arms. “I have told you many times that the Queen--”

“Oh, hush. I do not mind her company, my Wyrm,” the White Lady interrupts sweetly. She reaches one of her roots across the room to stroke the King’s cheek. To Grimm: “I see you’ve taken up my Wyrm on his offer, Nightmare King.”

“When it comes to him, I have little choice.” Grimm steps into the room proper. “Even though he has not disclosed why _exactly_ I am here.”

“I said you were to be a court magician, but not for me.” The King sets the child onto the floor and gently nudges her forward. “For her.”

“For her,” Grimm repeats blankly. The Princess stares unabashedly at him.

“Perform tricks for her, keep her company, make sure she doesn’t go anywhere she should,” the Pale King suggests.

“You are her father. Can you not do those things yourself?” Grimm asks. “Or perhaps the Lady? I mean no offense, but I could be summoned again at any time, and…”

He trails off and gestures vaguely.

“For the time being, no. Child, why don’t you introduce yourself?” He turns to the Princess, who has taken to staring at her feet. Grimm can sense the aura of uneasiness around her, and his heart goes out. Just because she’s little doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand what’s going on around her.

Grimm leans forward hopefully, with the best smile he can manage. Considering he looks like a monster, that’s very hard to accomplish.

The child grasps fistfuls of her dress and mumbles into her cowl. This kind of timidity is not uncommon among the Grimmchildren. Grimm knows just what to do.

“I am the Nightmare King, your humble subject from henceforth,” he says with a sweeping bow. He finishes by dropping to one knee, and holds his hand out. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my dear.”

The child shuffles forward and shyly places her hand on his palm. There’s a popping sound as soon as she does so, startling her back. The White Lady half-rises from her seat with a small sound of alarm, and even the Pure Vessel turns its head towards the noise.

Pinched between Grimm’s fingers is a bright red mockery of a Delicate Flower. The child gasps and reaches for it. It’s almost as large as she is; her face disappears into its petals when she sniffs it.

“Might I know your name?” Grimm asks. The child peeks over the blossom, rosy-cheeked from excitement.

“I’m Hornet.”

* * *

Hornet rests, but she does not sleep. She is not easily exhausted by Hallownest’s many trials, but the same cannot be said of Grimm. He’s fast asleep under the shelter of the tent. She sits cross-legged next to this slumbering giant, feeling far less antagonistic towards him than she did this morning. She can’t quite explain what she feels for him now. It had always been a given that everyone from her past was dead. Her gut feeling tells her to take him at his word, though. His account of the White Palace was too intimate for a retainer or a historian. He even knew of the Hollow Knight, who the Pale King had been intensely protective and secretive about.

“How was I to remember you? I was only a child...” But it does explain why she was familiar with so many of his magic tricks. Hornet sighs and props her chin on her hand. No matter how thoroughly she wracks her mind, her earliest days at the White Palace are practically nonexistent. She remembers the Hollow Knight’s own memories better than her own. They had shared many of them with her before being sealed away. That only further cemented her place as a living memorial: first to her mother and father, then to her sibling.

Hornet glances over at Ghost, who is cooking something over the campfire for the Grimmchild. Will she take on their burdens after they pass? She has seen many Vessels come through Hallownest. All have died, more than a few by her own hand.

And then there was the little Ghost, whom she had named before she realized what she was doing. By giving them a name, she has singled them out from the rest of her siblings. A name gives her something to be attached to.

Grimm has born the same name for ages, effectively stringing together all of his past lives into an endless cycle. In that manner, the Nightmare King will never truly die.

Hornet picks up her needle (finally reunited, thank Wyrm!) and polishes the blade just to keep her hands busy.

The Troupe Master—Nightmare King?—groans in his sleep. H ornet, still holding her weapon, peeks over his shoulder. She holds her breath and waits, but he does not awaken. He keeps one hand pressed over his chest, as if holding in his very heart. Hornet leans further to catch a glimpse of the healing wound. It is a gruesome sight, to be sure, but it looks better already.

It is curiosity that  brings her to settle her hand on Grimm’s shoulder. His shell radiates warmth that fills the tent and makes her chitin tingle. She hadn’t noticed until now, but her face and hands had almost gone numb from cold. Being near Grimm has the effect of sitting before a hearth.

It suddenly feels like a good time to lie down. Hornet curls up on the bedroll next to him, and watches the ash fall from outside the camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before writing this fic, I had considered making the flashback its own oneshot. However, it ended up fitting into this fic quite nicely. I wanted to create a contrast between Grimm, who is constantly changing, and Hornet, who has been in stasis with Hallownest for a very long time. Anyway, I can't believe it took 30 pages for her to FINALLY be like 'ok maybe he's not a total asshole after all'. Also I realized I use sleep as a plot device a LOT. Oops


	10. Chapter 10

Grimm seems far more at home in his tent, where he is surrounded by colors and decor that match how he looks. It’s Hornet’s first time being here while awake, she thinks. She keeps waiting for stars to dance in her eyes and for her head to hurt. But today, the Troupe seems far more unassuming. The bard and a termite she doesn’t recognize are rehearsing some basic tricks with the Grimmkin, pausing only to bow to Grimm when he walks by. Hornet trails behind him like a shadow, feeling rather odd but mystified at the same time. Hallownest bugs of all kinds loved the theatre, and would have killed for a glimpse of a backstage like this.

‘Mystified’. That word has never descried Hornet in her entire adult life.

“Not at the moment, no. Please continue rehearsing—and there’s a mechanism in the stage that isn’t working properly. Fix that before this evening.” Grimm waves them off, and leads Hornet away before she can get a better look at the performers. He brings her towards the back of the tent, and then up a long shaft, where he skitters upwards with an extra pair of legs she hadn’t noticed before. She tosses her needle up into the ceiling, and sails up after him.

“Are you a spider?” she asks incredulously.

“Can a spider fly?” He spreads his wings for emphasis. At the top of the shaft is a loft filled with masks. Piles and piles of them, wedged up against the walls to make room for the great metal contraption. Hornet looks into the dozens of dead eyes and--

_Hornet had trailed the little Ghost when she saw them go into the deepest, darkest parts of Hallownest. She had quickly lost track of them, but it was not because the Ancient Basin was particularly tricky to navigate. Walking into a hellish version of her childhood home had frayed her nerves to an extent that only the distant grinding of stone could bring her back to her senses._

_The ocean’s call became clear to her for the first time, and so she followed to the tall door not far from the ruins of the palace. The Pale King had forbade her from going near it; to him, it was a monument to his mistakes. Though to think of it as such was a mistake in and of itself._

_Hornet stood at the edge and peered down, and even from a distance saw thousands of pairs of eyes staring back up at her._

Grimm pulls a cord, and dark velvet curtains close over the masks. When Hornet still doesn’t respond, he approaches and places a hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright, dear?”

Hornet flinches out of her reverie, away from Grimm’s concerned touch. She puts a hand to her forehead. Unsettling memories both old and new have a stupefying effect on her, as if her head had been stuffed full of cobwebs. Her gut twists uncomfortably, and suddenly she wants to sit down.

“Hornet?” Grimm’s hand hovers over her arm. Hornet, heart pounding, holds out her hand and allows him to lead her to a plush velvet stool. He sits across from her and props his elbows on his knees, waiting patiently for her to catch her breath.

“It’s nothing,” she says, the moment she finds she can speak. “I was simply startled—I can tell you are unconvinced.”

“Correct.” Grimm cocks his head to the side. “As I mentioned before, I am attuned to strong negative emotions—in particular, reactions to trauma.”

The word ‘trauma’ bites into Hornet like a hungry spider. “This is not what I came here for,” she says, crossing her ankles. “We are not here to talk about me.”

“True.” Grimm closes his eyes, appearing contemplative. “That is precisely why I brought you up here: to show you this mechanism.”

He glides to the metal something in the middle of the room, but it’s not quite in the middle. It’s around the walls as well, and looping around the ceiling. Strung onto the metal cords are crimson pearls that don’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to their arrangement. Grimm kneels by the stand in the center and pulls some hidden lever, bringing the machine to life.

Hornet watches, awestruck, as the metal hums and vibrates. Each pearl lights up, and begins to travel along the machine—no, it’s not just a machine.

“It’s an orrery,” she says quietly. “But of what…?”

“Of all the worlds I’ve visited.” Grimm folds his hands behind his back. His smile is so wide that his eyes crinkle shut. “It is an orrery, yes, but also a map and a navigational tool. Each of these pearls serves as a keystone for the power I’ve absorbed from each fallen kingdom. Try and break them if you wish: I’ve protected this machine with my most powerful seals.”

Hornet stays seated. “And the way you absorb this power is inflicting an ailment on the survivors --”

“Such a harsh term for it,” Grimm interrupts, hands splayed amiably. He rounds over to stand behind Hornet, and she instinctively stiffens up, even after he moves past. “I did not bestow these nightmares upon your precious bugs. They were always there, buried away in the depths of their hearts and intensifying in moments of fear, and before their demise.”

“I saw an inflicted one who was clearly alive.” Hornet recalls seeing the Hunter, who was clearly alive but ailing.

“Yes, the live ones too. It has all surfaced, thanks to my proximity.”

 _Then I was right to ask you to leave,_ she thinks bitterly, but she has already made up her mind to compromise. She thinks of the thousands of broken little faces in the Abyss, all collateral of a pointless conflict. No, no, no. If something happens now, there will be no one left. Her remaining siblings…

“The child is to feed on these flames,” Grimm continues, throwing his arms out. “The Nightmares shall only reveal themselves when they have entered the kingdom, side-by-side with the summoner. When they have consumed enough for one more molt, they shall return, and the performance shall begin!”

He’s practically dancing around the room at this point, and Hornet gets the feeling he was looking forward to delivering such a monologue. It’s not hard to imagine him rehearsing it in front of the mirror, actually. She puts her hand over her mouth and giggles.

“You find this all quite amusing for someone who was ready to dance to the death with me,” says Grimm, whirling back around to face her. His cloak fans out, giving her a glimpse of his red-and-black carapace beneath. The natural shine to his torso is the kind that tells would-be predators, ‘I will poison you if you eat me’. Hornet stops laughing.

“You are a performer, no? Should you not be grateful that you can amuse and delight?” she counters, keeping her voice level.

Grimm puts a hand to his cheek. “You find me delightful?”

“Um--” Hornet’s face goes red. “No!” God, her voice cracked.

“That all being said, do you understand the Ritual now? When it has been completed, Hallownest will be added to the orrery, and the Troupe shall move on.” Grimm sits back down and crosses his legs. The look on his face has is that of someone who has just thought of something funny, and is struggling not to smile. He folds his hands on his knees and leans forward, ever so slightly.

Hornet is about to say ‘yes, thank you’, but something suddenly occurs to her: “Actually...what of the child? Why have them go out and consume the flames, when you are clearly capable of doing so yourself?”

And to that, Grimm opens his cloak. The wound on his chest has almost completely vanished. It’s as if Hornet had never stabbed him. “It may seem that way to you, but had I stayed outside of my tent for too long, I would not have fared so well. In fact, it is thanks to your intervention that I lasted as long as I did.”

He lets his cloak fall back into place. “For that, I must thank you.”

Surely he cannot be that frail? Hornet almost can’t believe what he told her, but it would not be the first time she saw a supposedly powerful being become sickly. Her thoughts turn to her father, and how he slowly wasted away after he had sealed away his perfect, pure Vessel. And that was without any underlying illness, or so she assumed. Who knows what ails Grimm, that could leave him unable to venture out on his own.

It’s none of her business, but now she badly wants to know. It puts a lot of weight on him going all the way to the edge of the world just to look for her.

“If you don’t mind, I have some curiosities regarding you,” Grimm says, deftly turning the topic away from himself. “You truly do not remember me?”

“Of course not.” Hornet shakes her head vigorously. “As far as I remember, not even my parents mentioned you before they...”

She trails off with a frown. Speaking of her parents is a self-imposed forbidden topic. To soothe herself from her own thoughts, she rubs the stitches along the hem of her cloak. They’re coming loose towards the front; she’ll have to mend it soon.

“Why did you keep this information to yourself?” she asks.

“Would you have believed me?”

Hornet shakes her head.

“Anyone would be shocked,” Grimm says. He snaps his fingers, and previously unseen sconces light up. The effect it has on the machinery is mesmerizing: the metal reflects the light like glass, rather than the material it actually is. The colors—not just red—dance along the walls like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

Grimm chuckles at her wide-eyed look. “It has been so long that you are practically a different person. But I remember that expression well.”

And here, Hornet had thought everything about her had changed. She had previously been saddened by anxieties of her parents no longer loving her if they saw what she had become. The Hollow Knight would be disappointed too, most likely. As a child, she had been loved for being full of energy and optimistically friendly towards everyone she met. To her elder sibling, who could not express themselves, they needed that kindness and understanding more than anyone.

Grimm carefully grasps her chin and tilts her face up. He has proved himself to be rather touchy, but it’s so strange: she doesn’t hate it at all.

“I missed you,” he says simply, stroking her cheek with his thumb. Hornet’s heart was already going at an alarming rate, but when he presses his forehead to hers, she thinks her chest is going to split open.

“W-wait, wait a minute,” Hornet sputters, “I, I have done nothing to be missed. Surely you can’t mean that.”

There’s a tight, coiling feeling in her chest that only intensifies when Grimm nuzzles against her forehead. The Hollow Knight had treated her the same when she was younger, only _that_ didn’t set her cheeks aflame. His hand is large enough that he could easily cover her face, yet he handles her like glass. It is a far cry from their fight, when they were just a pair of beasts out for blood.

“I am no liar,” Grimm purrs against her shell. “Please, allow me this moment.”

That simple honesty takes Hornet’s breath away. She’s no closer to understanding other bugs, and this further bewilders her. Even more so when she hears a heartbeat that does not belong to her. Being afraid that someone would hear her own heart was always just an exaggeration; she did not think it to actually be possible. She slips her hand past his cloak to rest it upon his chest. The first thing she notes is that his chitin is abnormally hot, and as sturdy as a piece of ore. His heart thrums just beneath her palm.

Sitting with him like this makes it easy for Hornet to lose track of her thoughts, and Grimm pulling away from her is akin to resurfacing from a dream. Any doubts she had about the tent being unsafe are gone now. It is a strange place, to be sure. Potentially dangerous, even, but Grimm’s presence reassures her.

But oh, Wyrm, just how lonely did she have to be throw herself at his mercy like that? Her own display of vulnerability brings a foul taste to the back of her throat.

It’s fortunate that an abrupt noise from downstairs  ruins the moment. Grimm makes a startled noise, coughs into his hand, and gets up.

“One moment,” he says, and disappears in a puff of smoke. Hornet stays where she is at first. The next loud  _thump_ , however, is too much for her to ignore. She goes to the edge of the loft, and climbs down after him.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for emetophobia
> 
> My headcanon for Divine is that basically, after spending so much time in the Nightmare Realm, she became a living conduit for alchemy, and that's why the fragile charms become unbreakable when she eats them. ALSO, I'm doing Banned Together Bingo, so you might see some Ghost x Hornet and other such ships here soon

The little Ghost and the Grimmchild had returned, the latter announcing their presence by immediately belching up a fireball and knocking over a box of stage makeup (why do they even have that? They all wear masks). Hornet returns to ground level unnoticed; all the attention is on the child, who is screeching and thrashing about the ceiling. Ghost patters along beneath them with their arms held out, fully expecting them to lose momentum and come crashing down.

Hornet steps forward to help, but Grimm plucks the child out of the air, and that’s the end of that. He tucks the screaming infant into the crook of his arm and paces, shushing them, while the others scramble to clean up the mess.

“What could possibly be the matter?” Grimm coos to the Grimmchild. It’s a startlingly domestic scene that Hornet hadn’t expected, not from someone who was apparently fine with handing his child off to a stranger. She keeps behind one of the velvet curtains, not wishing to disturb the scene. Ghost does that for her, anyway, by tugging on Grimm’s cloak. They’ve got a pad of paper with them—when did they get that? They’re writing, now, and intermittently showing Grimm, who is watching over their shoulder.

Ghost has never tried to communicate with her before. It was always just blank stares and following her around: the bare minimum, really. It’s Hornet’s fault, for being so harsh with them. She justified it before by telling herself that if they survived her twice, they could handle anything. They’d be the one who made it into the Temple of the Black Egg.

She never stopped to consider what they might be feeling, had assumed they couldn’t, ended up embarrassing herself. She thought she was beyond feeling ashamed and guilty over other bugs. Hallownest would swallow them all up in the end. Does she only care now because Ghost has proven they can survive? That speaks volumes of what kind of bug she has become. What would her mother, who had loved even the lowliest of spiders, think of her now?

Grimm speaks before she can sink beneath the waves of her mind. His voice is a buoy for her to latch onto, to pull her through the surface. She places a hand on the curtain and runs her fingers along the velvet in deep contemplation of his words.

“They are but a child, after all,” he is saying to Ghost. “It was remiss of me to overestimate them in such a way. Very well; I shall keep them with me ‘till they calm.”

The two exchange formalities—in Ghost’s case, a simple nod, and a folded piece of paper—and Grimm turns towards the depths of the tent with the Grimmchild in his arms. Hornet slips out from behind the curtain and follows, instinctively keeping to the shadows. She does not know how to approach someone without tailing them first. It should be the Vessel she follows first, since they never stay in one place for long and are actually harder to track down, but her interest has been pulled in a different direction.

She half-expected the tent to be some labyrinth, or at the very least, filled with buzzsaws and spikes. It’s actually quite mundane, like any other theater in the City of Tears. She had been behind the stage decades after the city fell, when she realized that she could go anywhere she wanted. The death of the kingdom had brought about a strange kind of freedom with no obligations, not at first. This reminds her of that quite a bit. It is a resting area of sorts, with curtains leading to other hallways and wooden doors ranging from cherry to almost black and oily-looking. The sigil of the Troupe is carved into each of them, giving the impression of a mold to be filled with boiling metal.

She was sure she saw Grimm come back here, but—ah, a ladder, half-hidden by one of the many curtains. Hornet climbs without a second thought, and ends up in a narrow hallway where the ceiling brushes against her horns. In place of cables and wires, there are what look to be veins, pulsing rhythmically and twitching when she brushes against them. It reminds her strongly of the Infection now festering in the Crossroads, and she shudders as she makes her way through.

She comes out into a hallway far more ornate than what was downstairs, with an arched wooden door she can only assume is Grimm’s chambers. The brass knocker is bigger than her own arm, and requires that she reach it with her needle. The members of the Troupe she has seen so far can either fly or are far bigger than her, so it makes sense, but it is still inconvenient.

A long moment of pause after knocking, and then the door swings open just wide enough for her to creep inside. This room is, by far, the most embellished she has seen since her days in the White Palace. Her feet sink into the carpet, and the curtains her hand brushes against feel like clouds. Unlike the rest of the tent, the sconces here are gilded, and the ceiling is painted in the likeness of an otherworldly firmament: black fading to crimson, flecked with gold stars that she swears wink at her when she looks up.

Grimm is lounging on a bed that makes even Hornet jealous, stroking the belly of the Grimmchild and humming a lullaby. She recognizes the song at once, but from where, she cannot say. Perhaps once upon a time, he had sung this to her? This room and the music are all so much that she is frozen in place.

“Welcome back, dear.” Grimm twirls a finger, and the door clicks shut behind her. “You could have asked Brumm or Divine to escort you here.”

“Huh?” Oh. The bugs from downstairs. Hornet blinks. “Did you know I--”

“Yes, I could feel you along the maintenance tunnel. No need to be shy, have a seat.”

An armchair with clawed feet waddles forward and settles at the bedside. Hornet sits, and feels like she’s going to be swallowed by the soft maw of some beast. She shifts to a kneeling position, with a pillow over her lap. If she gets too comfortable, she could fall asleep here.

“The maintenance tunnel?” Hornet repeats. She checks the paper from Ghost, upon which is written the single word ‘ _she_ ’ in shockingly neat handwriting. As she hands it over to him: “Did you know about this?”

“No. It has always fallen to the summoner to raise the Grimmchild.”

Was that how her own father justified himself, when he left her at the Hive? Hornet tamps down that ugly memory of screaming, surrounded by strangers and gold light she thought had been the Infection. It still pains her to go near that place. She wonders if the Grimmchild is aware enough of her surroundings to experience that terror.

Despite what Grimm just said, and despite neglecting to even name the little one, he looks used to taking care of children. He doesn’t mind that the Grimmchild nibbles his fingers or squeaks incessantly. In truth, she is curious: she hasn’t seen a living child outside the grub colonies since her days at the Hive, all those years ago. Children are a novelty nowadays. Even the travelers who pass through deign to settle if they are gravid or carrying eggs or hatchlings. Couples refuse to mate. The very air in Hallownest warns against it. Hornet herself had long, long ago given up on any thoughts of starting a family.

She sets the pillow aside and leans forward. “May I hold her?”

“Here. Be careful.” Grimm cups the Grimmchild in both hands, and offers her to Hornet. “She can support her head already, but her shell is fragile, you see.”

“Mhm.” Hornet cradles this warm, soft weight against her chest, and finds that she is not as jaded as she once thought. The child, recognizing her as a source of heat, has burrowed her face against her chest. Her wings and tail are larger than the first brief time Hornet saw her with Ghost, and her bulb-shaped head has split into a miniature of Grimm’s horns. She uses every inch of that newly-molted body to cling to Hornet.

Hornet adjusts the child in her arms, all the while worrying that she’ll slip and drop her. “What was it that upset her?” she asks in a low voice. The child is awake, but she fears that even her usual speaking volume would disturb her.

“The summoner—Ghost did not tell you?” He’s using the moniker she referred to them as—had the accepted that as their name? Had the Hollow Knight?

“They do not speak to me,” Hornet admits. “Our relationship is tenuous.”

“What a shame. They seem fond of you, you know.” Grimm sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “They refer to you as the ‘pretty red girl’. It’s rather cute, you know. Anyway, they said that there was a bug in Deepnest that gave the both of them quite a turn. It looked just like Ghost.”

Hornet is torn between the warm feeling of having a nickname, and the cold shiver of knowing just what Grimm is talking about. She idly strokes the Grimmchild’s back, wondering what would’ve become of her had she and Ghost stayed down there. “I...have heard stories of such creatures, but I did not expect the little Ghost to become frightened so easily. I have seen them enter places even I am hesitant to go.”

The Soul Sanctum and the Mantis Village, for example. One with bugs with half a foot already in the afterlife, another with bugs far too proud and territorial to reason with. Facing one of the great cryptids of Deepnest would be preferable.

She was supposed to take a hands-off approach with aiding the little Ghost. So much for that. Like when they had taken the King’s Brand upon themselves, responsibility suddenly weighs upon her. She was the one who had presented them with the choice of coming to Kingdom’s Edge. Doing so had alleviated her burden of protecting her father’s grave, but now little Ghost had to carry that mark.

“I can’t imagine she wants to go back now,” Hornet says, when Grimm begins to stare. She has to keep reminding herself that he can sense when she’s upset. The Grimmchild might have sensed it too, which would explain why she immediately latched onto her. “For now, I...”

She trails off. The Grimmchild is looking up at her, really looking, with those huge black eyes of hers. More importantly, she has wrapped her tail around Hornet’s arm, effectively cuffing herself to the spider.

“Myaa,” the Grimmchild whines when Hornet tries to detach her. Grimm chuckles into his hand

“You’ve been chosen,” he jokes.

Only, it’s not a joke when Hornet realizes she cannot patrol Hallownest with a hatchling clinging to her chest. She does not have the heart to pull her off, nor can she blame herself for being soft. Perhaps the child thinks she looks like Ghost, who has gone off to Wyrm-knows-where for the time being, leaving Hornet alone in the belly of the beast, so to speak. That they have any affections for her at all is more confusing than Grimm’s fondness for her. But, with things as they are, she doesn’t known if she’ll ever have the chance to talk to them about it.

All the stranger is that this is the first vacation day, so to speak, that she has had in decades. Both she and Grimm agreed on keeping the child from Hallownest until she had recovered from her fright, and besides, the little Ghost had counted on her being in the tent or at least Dirtmouth until they returned.

“I suppose naming you is up to me, now,” Hornet says to the Grimmchild. She’s sitting just outside the main tent, watching the eternal night sky. The ever-present layer of clouds makes it a challenge to pick out more than a few stars at a time, and they are constantly shifting and changing. It gives her the impression of being in a murky fishbowl.

“I myself was not named until I was a year old, as per custom,” she continues, scratching between the child’s horns. “The infant mortality rate in Deepnest was very high. Most didn’t bother naming their children at birth, because it was very likely they’d die within a few months. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

The Grimmchild’s only contribution is to suck on Hornet’s sleeve.

“Hungry?” Hornet glances at the town. No, no. She doesn’t know anyone there. But Grimm? It’s sad to say, but she knows him better than anyone else in that town, and he has only been here for a couple of days.

What does the child of a Nightmare God eat? She paces back and forth between the main tent and the path leading into town as the Grimmchild begins to cry. The noise disturbs the giraffe beetles stationed at the entrance. They shuffle in place, and one of them tosses back its head with a snort.

Just then, one of the side tents opens. Hornet had been distracted by the main tent from the start and never paid them any mind, not until now. The termite from earlier pokes her head out and regards Hornet with a bemused smile.

The side tent feels grounded in reality, and as a result, so does the termite, who introduces herself as ‘Divine’ and never once opens her single eye. Hornet perches on what appears to be a nightstand, and weaves a sling for the Grimmchild, if only to give her poor arms a break. A brief smattering of rain batters the tent, followed by dry wind. A distant rumble promises a heavier storm on the horizon, which means flooding underground. The worst Deepnest will get is a light sprinkle.

“Ahh. It is not as if the Gods can only subsist on Essence and ambrosia, no. I won’t miss a bottle of milk,” Divine says as she happily sets up a portable stove. Hornet used to have one just like that when she still cared enough to cook her food. She used it until it rusted and fell apart, and never bothered to look for another.

“Your abdomen,” is all Hornet can respond with. The entire lower half of Divine’s body appears painfully swollen. Not only that, but she can see a ball of light wavering beneath her skin.

“Ohh, this? It’s a gift I am fermenting within myself. The little pale thing wanted it back, but I won’t until give it until it has brought me my geo.” Divine hums and switches on the stove. “So greedy!”

Fermenting? Hornet loops the sling over her shoulder and under her other arm. There are many contexts for that, none of which she understands in full. Food production, alchemy, or digestion...she thinks. In another world, one in which the Hollow Knight done their job—or, more optimistically, a world where they didn’t need to—she would have had a proper education and therefore would know how these things worked. In another world, the Hollow Knight would’ve held out long enough for her to learn more than she knows.

Hornet tucks the Grimmchild into the fitted sling, so that she’s snug against her chest. No more weary arms for Hornet, no more having to hold on for dear life for the Grimmchild. She strokes the little one’s face with her forefinger, entranced by how soft her carapace is. She thinks of the Midwife, still surviving somewhere in Deepnest without a brood to care for.

However, Deepnest is out of the question.

“Why didn’t Grimm name her?” Hornet asks, feeling rather small and stupid.

“Ahh, it’s a girl this time?” Divine perks up. “She will inherit the Master’s name.”

The implications of ‘this time’ make Hornet shudder. As if there had been more Grimmchildren. She thinks of her lifeless siblings at the bottom of the world.

“That’s going to be confusing,” Hornet says. Divine gives her a look that she can’t quite read, but does not interrupt. “I think she’s old enough now to have her own name.”

“If you wish.” Divine takes the bottle from the water and tests it on her claw. “Ahh, alright, this is fine. Here you go.”

The Grimmchild stirs, sees Hornet holding the bottle, and begins to mewl plaintively. Hornet is forced to put her arm around the sling to keep her from lunging out, which just makes the child cry harder. Only when she has latched onto the nipple does she finally settle down. It’s remarkable, really, how such a little thing can drink so much. It’s not a small bottle, either: the Troupe must have been prepared to take care of a child with such a big appetite.

Just watching her is enough for Hornet to soften up a little bit more. Despite everything, there is still a bug who can eat so heartily and whose biggest problem is simply a monster that is too much of a coward to leave the cramped tunnels of Deepnest. She was fully ready to go down there and confront it herself, but at this rate, Ghost will get to it before her.

Maybe being relegated to babysitter for the day isn’t so bad. It’s not a bad thing to rest. As the contents of the bottle are drained, she tilts it further so the child isn’t sucking on air. To Divine, she asks, “What is it that you do here?”

“Ohhhh, I’m the fortune-teller. Shall I read your future?” Divine inches over to a table whose features are obscured by a dark cloth.

“No, no.” Hornet shakes her head. She already knows her future isn’t promising: she’ll either become a Dreamer, like her mother, or the Infection will finally break down her defenses. The last thing she needs is someone to confirm that and give her something to dread.  
  
“Shame. My act is so unpopular these days.” Divine puts her elbows on the table and sighs dramatically. “If only I could alchemize faster! I’d make a good show out of that.”

“Alchemize?” Hornet repeats. So that’s what ‘fermentation’ was referring to.

“Ahh, yes, yes. It’s a trick I picked up with the Troupe, yes.” Divine nods, her ever-present smile widening. “You could join us, little friend. What kind of bug are you, anyway? I don’t recognize your smell.”

“I am of the Weaver Clan.” It’s the truth—but with some omissions. Getting into the details of her heritage with someone she has just met is a hard no for her. “Thank you for your offer, but I’ll have to decline. I belong here.”

Leaving Hallownest is simply out of the question. It means that she’ll have to part from Grimm, but—she has no idea why she’s thinking of him now. She’s the one who wanted him to leave in the first place.

“Fair enough.” Thankfully, Divine does not pursue the matter further.

The Grimmchild finishes the bottle soon after this. Hornet wrenches the nipple from her mouth and wipes the excess milk from her chin. She swears there’s something else she needs to do after this, and would have never remembered had the Grimmchild not burped loudly. She burps again as Hornet pats her on the back: a sharp, sudden sound that is followed by something hot and wet on her shoulder. A _lot_ of something on her shoulder.

“Ough.” Hornet makes a face and holds the child away from her. A string of vomit follows, lands across her now-dirty cloak.

She thinks she’d rather go fight that monster in Deepnest.

* * *

Grimm doesn’t outright laugh when she returns to the main tent, but his shoulders are shaking, and he has a hand over his mouth. His long fingers are not enough to hide the edges of his crumpled smile. Hornet narrows her eyes at him.

“Surely you have a bath.” The Grimmkin and Brumm are staring at her unabashedly. She glares at them all, and they have the sense to avert their eyes.

“We do. But have you a spare cloak to change into?”

Hornet’s face falls. No, she doesn’t. Her clothes over the years have been pilfered from the City of Tears or made from the dwindling spools of silk in the Ancient Basin and Deepnest. With how long she has lived, there is always the fear that one day there will be nothing left for her to wear.

“No?” Grimm asks, when she doesn’t respond. He sighs, and gestures for her to follow him. “Come with me.”

He takes her and the Grimmchild upstairs and to a bathroom that is similar in décor to his chambers. The tub appears to be made of pewter, and when he turns on the faucet, the water is already steaming.

“You may leave your clothes outside the door,” he says, while trying to pry the Grimmchild from her. At first, she does not want to let go of Hornet. But once her father’s warm hands have enveloped her, she makes a contented noise and lets go.

“Child, please—Ah, there we go. You’ve eaten too much, haven’t you?” he coos at the Grimmchild. “Have you got a tummy ache? I cannot believe a little baby like you made such a big mess.”

There’s still a hint of amusement in his voice when he turns to Hornet. “The left tap is hot, the right one is cold. Don’t use the soap in the red bottle; your carapace will burn right off. I’ll leave you to it.”

Once Grimm leaves, and Hornet is sure there’s no one else in the halls, she strips down and leaves her clothes outside as he asked of her. She samples each of the soaps, and chooses one that smells like honey and cinnamon. She searches the linens closet for a towel, and finds all of them so soft that she suddenly has the urge to build a nest. The slightly filthy state of her own body prevents her; she knows she would be uncomfortable if she didn’t wash up first.

The water is heavenly and feels like the finest spider silk, thanks to the bath formula she used. The bubbles give it all the impression of some watery firmament, trapped in a bowl of dark matter. Hornet submerges herself completely, and, oh Wyrm, she missed this so much. She had gotten so used to the hot springs that she forgot what it was like to bathe in a proper tub.

Hornet resurfaces and holds out her arms. Her chitin is marred with scars, most old, but a few fresh ones from her battle with Ghost. A few haven’t quite healed. There’s a slight mark on her chest that had once been a deep puncture wound acquired in the Ancient Basin, from a mistimed jump. She had staggered around with that thorn stuck inside of her for about three days in search of any kind of medicine before she started seeing amber spots in her vision. If not for her Wyrm-and-Void blood, if not for her stumbling into the security of Greenpath...

She can’t do anything normal without remembering something awful, can she? She wonders why she bothers. Regardless, she has a bath to take, and other soaps to add to the tub.


	12. Chapter 12

The Nightmare King, as he tended to the young princess, regretted that the Ritual required that the Grimmchildren stay by the sides of their summoners. He also found himself intensely jealous of the White Lady, who disdained him, and the Queen of Deepnest—Herrah—the spiderling’s mother. If not for the Ritual, he could have found a similar union with the Pale King. His duties as the court magician—glorified babysitter—kept him and the King apart.

The princess, young Hornet, quickly filled up the void that loneliness had carved into him. She was far too young to be concerned with the Ritual, and was too sheltered to fear the plague that was hollowing out the kingdom to which she would someday be queen. He had trouble imagining her sitting on her father’s throne by herself, when she is more often than not in someone else’s lap.

(This is, in part, because he has trouble envisioning a Hallownest after the Infection.)

As of late, that ‘someone else’ has been him. The evening she is due for her weekend visit, Grimm finds himself waiting for her at the front gates for her. Grimm, the Nightmare King, who had thrown off his golden mantle and consumed half a world’s worth of kingdoms before being bound by the Ritual, a name feared by those who remembered...now holding his arms out to catch the child running across the bridge. Herrah stalks along behind her flanked by two Devouts. They make eye contact, and she nods to him in greeting.

“Grimm!” Hornet throws herself into his waiting arms. She puts her hands on his shoulder and leans up to whisper to him. “Listen, yesterday, I found a treasure.”

“Oho?” Grimm smiles as he follows her mother inside. “Well now, you’re going to have to tell me what it is.”

“It’s a surprise,” Hornet says. She’s playing with one of the chain buttons on his cloak. “Show you when we go inside.”

She doesn’t say another word until they’re inside the castle, and she has separated from him to greet her father and the White Lady. The adults convene in the foyer to discuss one thing or another, and Hornet alternates between each of them, cloying for their attention until the Pale King, exasperated, shoos her away.

“But Daddy,” Hornet complains when he tries to usher her out of the room. “You said you’d play with me.”

“Not now.” The Pale King says this a little more harshly than he should have, earning a glare from Herrah (even with her mask, they all just _know_ ). With a deep sigh, he continues, “Later.”

“But...now?” she suggests, though she doesn’t sound too hopeful about it. Grimm waits until she has hugged her mother goodbye and left the room before coming to collect her. Herrah and the White Lady will no doubt give him grief over this, but that won’t stop Grimm from confronting him later. No matter how aloof the Pale King seems, he is not dismissive, especially when it comes to his children.

Had something happened?

“Don’t fret, little one,” Grimm reassures Hornet. “I’ll make sure he keeps his promise. Now, what was that treasure you found?”

He takes long strides down the hall. Here they come across the balcony garden. It overlooks the craggy landscape behind the White Palace, which was curiously untouched by the King’s renovations to the rest of the Ancient Basin. As it is darkening into night, it all looks far more ghoulish than it has any right to be. Though he stands inside, looking out through the wide arched door, he feel exposed.

Hornet appraises this view, and makes a face. “Don’t like it out there. Too dark,” she tells Grimm. “Saw a ghost.”

“A ghost, hmm?” Grimm pats her on the back.

“Uh-huh. Have you ever seen a ghost?” Hornet watches as the balcony recedes from view. “They...they have bright eyes.”

She begins to say more, but suddenly clamps her mouth shut. Grimm understands. Words are powerful. Words can affirm the existence of miracles and misfortunes alike, and summon all sorts of things into being. Despite her young age, she already has an instinct for that. She definitely got that from her father. Herrah, from what he knows of her, looks like the type of bug to approach her demons first.

“Then we ought to keep a little light in the nursery, make them think someone is already there,” says Grimm. “In the meantime—you must be tired from your journey. Let’s see if we can’t get you something to eat.”

* * *

The Pure Vessel is in the kitchen. It’s sitting at the kitchen table in front of a half-eaten shepherd’s pie and twiddling the fork in its fingers (the same general shape as the Hallownest seals, hilariously). It’s this mundane moment, the way it goes still as soon as Grimm enters, that makes him wonder if perhaps he should be calling the Vessel an ‘it’ at all. The Pale King himself refers to the Vessel as ‘they’, after all. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they were just a normal adolescent.

“Howl!” Hornet half-shouts, alerting the entire kitchen staff of her presence. Her legs are kicking even before Grimm sets her down, and then she’s off like a rocket. Her trajectory: her beloved older sibling. The Pale King had confided in him that the Pure Vessel had been Hornet’s babysitter before he entered the picture, with a tinge of guilt: he did not seem to enjoy the idea of separating the two, even though it was necessary. For what reason, though? The fact that they were still in their training armor? There’s a streak of plant matter across their forehead that tells him they were fighting with the knight Isma.

Grimm doesn’t know why the King insists on training them up as a knight. It’s not like his sister is going to be available to beat up in the physical realm. Unless they are to fight her in the _Dream Realm_ …? But, no, that would imply taking them out later. He makes a note to ask the King about this later.

“A serving for her too, please. And dessert,” Grimm says to one of the cooks, only taking a hot drink for himself. Hornet is playing tug-of-war with her natural shyness around the Palace staff and her elation at seeing her sibling, who very patiently allows her to cling to their back and tell them all about her week. She only breaks the conversation to attack her dinner when it arrives. The Pure Vessel, like clockwork, ties a napkin around her neck as an impromptu bib. Definitely their sister’s keeper.

The royal siblings sitting in the kitchen rather than the dining hall is to be expected at this point, as the schedules of their parents and the knights seldom allow for all of them to dine together. It is no surprise, either, that the Pure Vessel leaves as soon as they are finished with their dessert, despite Hornet’s cry of dismay.

“Why don’t they wanna play anymore?” Hornet sniffles as Grimm tries to placate her with a bowl of jelly. Her visit has hardly started, and she already looks miserable. Under the best of circumstances, she doesn’t have much context for what happens in the Palace. Grimm can only imagine what it must look like to her, to see her father suddenly closed off and irritable, and her elder sibling absorbed in their training.

“They are training for a kind of test, I believe,” says Grimm, who is around for longer than just the weekend. “I’ll see if I can pull them away from their studies for a bit. Now, say ‘ahhh’.”

“Ahhh.” But not even her favorite brown sugar beetle jelly is enough to pull her from her despondency.  She doesn’t even complain about the bib, something she has protested since she has been old enough to speak, according to her mother. She says it makes her look babyish, Herrah had told him with a chuckle.

When they’ve left the kitchen, Hornet is full and sleepy in Grimm’s arms. It’s while he’s brushing her fangs and readying her for bed that he gets the idea to speak with the Pale King. There runs the risk, however, of Hornet straying from the nursery without him knowing, so he had asked a retainer to keep an eye out for her.

“Comfortable?” he asks after tucking her in. The Pure Vessel’s absence makes the bed look like an ocean in which Hornet has found herself hopelessly lost. The stuffed toy in her arms serves as a little lifeboat.

“Uh-huh.” Hornet’s stare is the Pale King’s in miniature.

“Then I’ll be outside. Good night, little princess.” He gives the comforters one last pat and turns around, ready to leave. A tiny fist pulling on his cloak stops him.

“No.” Hornet tries to pull him back. “Stay.”

Grimm looks over his shoulder to see dark tears brimming in her eyes, looking for all the world like this is her first night in the White Palace.

“I’ll stay,” he says, slowly sitting on the high-backed chair next to the bed. The White Lady’s chair. She or the Pale King should be sitting here instead, not him. They’re the ones who have the know-how and confidence to handle children. Grimm feels like a stand-in, a placeholder for the bugs who should really be at Hornet’s side.

“Don’t go away too.”

“I won’t.” Grimm pauses. “You know, being homesick is normal. And just because your parents aren’t here doesn’t mean you cannot see them. If you wish, I could call your mother or father.”

“Nuh.” Hornet shakes her head. She’s clutching onto Grimm’s forefinger with an almost desperate grip. It seems as if she’s struggling to find the right words, the way she squirms and gnaws on her toy. “They’re going to leave. Howl, too.”

Her face scrunches up, and Grimm strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw it.”

“In a dream?” he ventures, ever so carefully.

“Mm.” Hornet shrugs. A nightmare, then. He thought he had done better with warding those off, but of course, he cannot protect her while she is in Deepnest. Even if she doesn’t understand what’s happening in the world around her, no matter how sheltered everyone is trying to keep her, she is still being affected just as much as any other bug. Grimm puts away the idea of speaking to the Pale King; that will have to wait. His duty, first and foremost, is to watch over the princess.

Hornet falls asleep to the sound of Grimm humming a lullaby, and he remains by her side until the Pure Vessel finally returns, cleaned but exhausted. They slump into bed without even tucking themselves in, and in her sleep, Hornet turns towards them.

On his way out, Grimm turns the princess’s words over in his head, unable to shake the dread that they bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't been writing much lately because I got Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns and I'm kind of obsessed. It took some serious effort to drag myself away from that game and get back to my fanfics. This ended up being a flashback chapter. The Grimm we see here is, of course, the red-shelled NIghtmare King version. As usual, I get lazy and stop at about 1k words, but that's fine.


	13. Chapter 13

The current incarnation of Grimm has quickly discovered that Hornet’s cloak needs more than just a good washing. He initially takes it to a few Grimmkin servants and requests that they bring it back, spotless, within the hour. He’s not one for menial labor. Not even ten minutes later, however, one of the servants comes to inform him that some seams have come out of the cloak. The thread is practically rotten, and the fabric is ratty in most places, Master, and so forth.

Grimm comes into the servants’ quarters to see for himself, and is disgusted to find that, when wet, the cloak looks more like a piece of mold than proper fabric. Parts of it have broken off in the water, like flakes of rust.

He had held Hornet recently, but failed to recognize the sorry state she was in, if her clothes are any indication. He holds back the urge to burn it all up, instead instructing the servants to dispose of it themselves. With a flourish, and with the Grimmchild around his shoulders like a stole, he disappears to his quarters.

The Nightmare King knew how to sew, among other things. As such, Grimm is not daunted by the task of creating a cloak. Two, perhaps. One for cold weather, one for warm. He’s already been so forward with her that he might as well make her a gift. The wound on his chest throbs like an extra heart. He can’t, for the life of him, understand how he became fixated on the spider. It goes beyond those memories that do and don’t belong to him, where even sad recollections become evidence for a long-lost happiness.

He couldn’t stay mad at her no matter how she lashed out at the Troupe’s presence, and he sought her out when it was dangerous. His actions speak to some level of devotion that makes him relive again and again that moment where he touched his forehead to hers. His heart only raced like that before when with Brumm, during quiet moments sprinkled between the endless dance of Rituals. And, long before that, his long-lost Wyrm.

Grimm stands with crimson and royal blue fabric in each hand, paralyzed by sharp pangs in his thorax both physical and emotional. He mentally adds Hornet’s name to the short list of bugs who have captured his heart. Acknowledging this is, as is always the case, frightening and relieving at the same time.

If he were to initiate a relationship with her, if there were no Ritual to worry about, he would not know how to go about it. She is wary of her world in a way that survivors of dead lands often are, but none have protected the remains of their old homes as fiercely as she has. To her, he is her temporary ally who she has begrudgingly taken in. At worst, he’s a ghoulish creature who has shouldered his way into her life despite her failing to recognize him. He tried to ring the bells of her memory, and failed.

He turns these thoughts over in his mind and replays each action he took as he pushes the pedal of the sewing machine. It’s easy work making a cloak like Hornet’s: just a couple pieces of fabric with a couple of seams, no frills, a simple cowl. That style suits her. At the White Palace, she’d wear almost anything—couldn’t really say no—but would complain if the sleeves or waist were too tight or there was lace anywhere that would brush against her sensitive chitin. Worst of all for her were the skirts that came down to her feet and restricted her movements.

Grimm is lucky that his own cloak is an extension of his body, to be maneuvered, used in shows, and even weaponized (he could have restrained Hornet before she landed that fatal blow to his body).

He finishes both cloaks in record time, because sewing is not too different from suturing to him, and he carries them back to the bathroom with them draped over one arm.

The fragrance of bathing oils hits him before he even knocks. Of course—any bug would want some luxury after living in squalor. He chuckles inwardly at the image of Hornet, eyes aglow, picking bottles off the shelves. Then he raps his knuckles against the door.

“Your garments were beyond repair, so I’ve gone ahead and replaced them. I think you should find them far more durable than what you were wearing before.” No response. He thinks, absurdly, that the tub was too big for her and she drowned in it. No, he would have known if she—or anyone else within a certain radius—died in his absence. If not for the deluge of death and ruin he has been subjected to in his lifetimes, he wouldn’t have even thought of it.

“Hornet?” He raises his voice a tad, enough to be heard over rushing water. Silence. She...she didn’t use the bottle he warned her about, did she? A strange, strangled kind of panic overtakes him, and he says, “I’m coming in.”

He pushes open the door and sees first the bathtub, drained but still with a light froth of suds on the side. A number of bottles are sitting on the tub’s ledge. All are warm, sweet scents, the candied ones he prefers after particularly hard days. The little demon in the red bottle doesn’t appear to have been touched, but he can’t know for sure.

The Grimmchild, who has followed him inside, mewls to get his attention. He turns his head and sees the linens closet open, with an avalanche of towels on the floor. And there is Hornet, sprawled among them with her chin on her shoulder and drool on her mouth. Her chest rises and falls with each slow, easy breath. The Grimmchild crawls onto her stomach, and topples over when Hornet rolls onto her side. Beneath her cloak, with only the towels to cover her, she looks slight and frail—but when he gets closer, he can see evidence of the contrary: scars and wounds, old and new, mar her pitch carapace.

Grimm holds his breath. He doesn’t remember if nudity was a social norm in Hallownest or something taboo—the Pale King took great pains to cover himself, as did most bugs in the Palace, but that seemed to be the exception rather than the norm. Yes, Hornet is covered by towels, but he does not want to risk startling her.

“If you wished to sleep, I could have prepared a room for you.” Or lent his own, he adds privately. Grimm squeezes her shoulder, and she finally stirs.

“Mm?” Hornet scrubs her eye with a fist, squints at the Grimmchild who has not left her side. She pulls a towel over her shoulders and huddles further into her impromptu nest.

“Your clothes.” Grimm offers the silks to her.

“Those aren’t mine,” Hornet yawns, bleary-eyed and completely unguarded.

“Your other one was in such a state of disrepair that we could not save it. Wear this.” Then, feeling so fond and wanting to tease her, “Or, could it be that you cannot dress yourself?”

At this, Hornet sits up and snatches the cloaks to her chest. She narrows her eyes at him, but not without a flush spreading across her shell. “Do not treat me like a grub,” she snaps.

Grimm’s laughter is raspy and deep. “As you wish, princess. I shall be downstairs.”

He tucks the Grimmchild under his arm and laughs himself out of the room, but as soon he is down the hall, he doubles over against the wall with his hands over his face. Jokes aside, past encounters with other bugs aside, his heart would have exploded if he really did have to help her. Lurid fantasies of her having some secret injury and needing help crawl onto shore, and he holds them back under until they drown. He’s acting like a love-crazed school child, for hell’s sake.

“Myaa,” says the Grimmchild, half-lolling out of his arm. She’s been patient throughout the whole ordeal, but he knows from past Grimmchildren that this will not last. He puts the rest of Hornet out of his mind for the time being, and heads downstairs.

* * *

Hornet reappears on the ground floor not long after, with her new cloak hanging just above her knees. The silken fabric fans about her like the petals of a mysterious red flower as she descends. She is far less bedraggled than when Grimm first encountered her. She looks polished, in fact, a glimpse of what could’ve been had she not been struck by the falling debris of her old life.

There’s a lull in the conversation when she steps forward, and this flusters her enough that she steps back.

“Ahem.” Hornet coughs a bit. She shrugs one shoulder, briefly holds up the second cloak draped over her arm. “What am I to do with this one?”

Grimm can’t keep his eyes off her. What is she to do with it? The question catches him off guard. He assumed she would know. “You put it away, of course, to wear later,” he says, trying not to gawk at her. “Have you not a receptacle for such a purpose?”

“No.” Hornet distractedly opens her arms for the Grimmchild to fly into. “I’ve not had a need for such furnishings in a long while.”

So, what she’s saying is that for years and years, she has never owned more than one piece of clothing at a time. If he had known that, he would have scrubbed her down himself. How could she endure being so filthy? Not only that, but the dirt from whatever she was wearing could have caused infections or chafed her carapace. She could’ve gotten mites, ones even tinier than the tiniest of bugs, chewing away at her. Thank Wyrm he’s able to mask his disgust—not at her, but at the circumstances she was forced into. She doesn’t deserve that.

“Then you may keep it here until you need it,” says Grimm. He doesn’t mention that it’ll be temporary. He doesn’t want to think about what will become of him at the end of the Ritual, can’t even begin to think of a way to break it to her. She, naive to all of this, opens her arms for the Grimmchild to fly into.

“You have my thanks,” she murmurs, and leaves the cloak on a nearby trunk, for a Grimmkin to take away to more proper storage. The Grimmchild butts her head against Hornet’s jaw, mewing and rasping until Hornet strokes her back. “By the way—have you not thought of a name for her?”

Ah, the child. He’s done a real ghastly job of taking care of her. “Not yet. I confess that I have not even thought about it.”

Hornet makes a face, and scratches her neck. “Then you’ve got something to think about while I seek out little Ghost. Perhaps you’ll have a list of ideas when I return with them.”

And by that, she obviously means, ‘you’d better have some names written down by the time I get back’. He nods silently.

Hornet carries the Grimmchild as far as the tent’s entrance, and for a moment pauses on the threshold between the warm insides of the Troupe and the cold, unflinching wind of Dirtmouth. Grimm stands with her, and in silence they both look out into the dusty wasteland on which the fading town was built.

She’s scratching again under her cloak, and Grimm finally remembers to ask: “By the by, you did not use that red bottle, did you?”

“Of course not,” says Hornet. “I must just be allergic to one of the ingredients in your gaudy soaps. Having as many as you do feels excessive.”

“Yet you used quite a few of them, did you not?” Grimm teases with a wide grin. “I must say, you smell delicious.”

He expects a harsh remark, but instead Hornet sniffs her free arm with a worried look. Ah, he remembers now—the princess had always been literal-minded. “’Tis a joke, my dear. That being said, if you intend to depart, I would prefer the child wait here with me.”

Hornet detaches the Grimmchild from her person and offers her to Grimm. This awakens her from the light doze she had entered previously. She yawns, exhaling a bit of smoke as she does, and stretches her wings. Her big, black eyes settle on Hornet, who she regards with an unfettered smile.

“Mama,” the Grimmchild coos. The tip of her tail curls into a happy question mark shape. Hornet’s eyes go wide, and Grimm takes the child into his arms before she can drop her.

“Well, well,” Grimm chokes out, equally startled. “She has certainly taken a liking to you.”

“I can’t imagine why.” And before anything else can be said, Hornet darts out into the eternal night. Grimm is left alone with the child cradled in his arm. This time he does not fear losing track of her, but now he is left with a new anxiety. It is the summoner who should be the Grimmchild’s parental figure, not Hornet, who is uninvolved with the Ritual and has no responsibility towards her. He can imagine, however, why the Grimmchild latched onto her so easily. Not only is she cloaked in that familiar, comforting red, but she has a minute resemblance to the wayward Vessel.

Still, to think of Hornet as her mother while Grimm is her father—it’s too much for him to take in. With the pull of a rope, the curtains fall over the entrance of the tent. He retreats into the Troupe’s depths; there is work yet to be done, both for the Ritual and for Hornet’s request.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've realized that there's an unfinished sentence in an earlier chapter, I think, so I'm going to run back and fix that x_x Also I realized an inconsistency--Hornet said that naming the Grimmchild is up to her now, but then she asks Grimm for ideas...but then again she's kind of leading the whole thing so I guess it should be okay. Thanks for reading!


	14. Chapter 14

While Grimm is in his chambers, leaning over a roll of parchment and rubbing his forehead, Hornet goes down the well and rings the bell at the Stag Station. The closest stop to Deepnest should be the Queen’s Station, and to her relief, the old beetle still knows where to go.

“A little traveler has been opening each gate for me,” he tells her as he thunders down the tunnel. Hornet squints against the wind lashing against her shell, and makes a noise of acknowledgment. No matter where in Hallownest, the walls of the stag tunnels are the same blue-gray stone from the Crossroads, and veiled by a thin mist. After being surrounded by the warmth of the Troupe, it takes more than a moment to get used to the chill.

At Queen’s Station, she hears the sounds of a crowd, but knows it’ll be as empty as ever when she steps outside. This is one of those places in Hallownest that feels haunted in a traditional, storybook sense: voices, bells, the clatter of carts, all long-gone. Hornet turns back to the stag and asks, “Are you sure there is not a way into Deepnest proper?”

The old stag shakes his head. “If there was, I wouldn’t have denied you passage.”

“Thank you anyway.” Hornet bows and leaves. The only Stag Station allowed in Deepnest was the one in the Distant Village. She has foggy memories of waiting there for her father and for the Hollow Knight to come visit, but the excitement she felt upon hearing the stag’s legs thundering down the tunnel is still palpable. Alas, those happy memories will never repeat themselves in present day.

Hornet knows this place like the back of her hand, so she can walk and remain absorbed in her thoughts. She tries to remember the names of the Weavers in the village, and of the bees in the Hive. She doesn’t trust that Grimm will have come up with anything good by the time she gets back, and besides, she’s good at naming things. She once had a journal full of names both real and imagined, but it was lost along with the rest of the White Palace. Never again had she tried to replicate that treasure.

She leaps over various hazards and dispatches infected bugs as easily as breathing, and finally comes to a wide pit. The little Ghost had carelessly disturbed the ground and fallen into the Depths a while back. Their entrance into her former home had badly disturbed her, and she would’ve fished them out herself had they not immediately disappeared from her sight. She remembers pacing anxiously until they reappeared much later in the City of Tears, looking exhausted and ragged.

They hadn’t discovered any of the Dreamers yet, and Herrah was by far the hardest to reach, but Hornet was still terrified that they’d find her. That fear prickles beneath her now as she crawls along the tunnels. There is a new concern now, that they’re going to get themselves hurt.

It’s a silly thought to have when they bear the King’s Brand. Not to mention they’re older than her. But still.

Deepnest is big, and Hornet has no idea where Ghost could have gone. The Midwife may or may not be alive to provide directions or a hint, and Hornet is too nervous to check, doesn’t want to find her desiccated body somewhere. She hasn’t seen her since her mother went to sleep. Would Ghost have even made it that far?

Hornet would call for them, but she knows better than to raise her voice in these tunnels. She’d bring every predator down upon her in seconds.

She passes a nest of Deeplings that she does not have the heart to kill, and squeezes into a particularly narrow tunnel. She emerges into a barren, deathly quiet cavern. It’s a good place for her to sit and catch her breath. About five feet away from her is the corpse of an earwig that looks...fresh. Hornet nudges it with her needle, and the tip sinks in a little. It’s not a corpse creeper, but not infected, either. What little body fluids remain inside of it aren’t tainted.

A fresh corpse of an uninfected bug that looks like it was drained of its innards. Hornet is sure that she has made it to the monster’s den. That’s good luck—she might find the little Ghost after all. Knowing them, they’ve probably made good headway and searching the monster. The spider tribe had a name for it—Nosk, she believes. According to old folk stories, the Hollow Knight themselves had driven Nosk from its original nest beneath the Weaver’s Den and rescued several missing children from its clutches. This was before she was born, and factored into the little hero-worship crush she had on them when she was very small.

The little scrap of innocence she has left is enough for her to believe that the Hollow Knight could have felled Nosk in one swipe, if they were here. Also, they’d be far stronger than Ghost.

Hornet digs a grave for the poor, deceased earwig, and resolves to aid Ghost, if not carry them out of Deepnest outright. They’re guileless and will absolutely fall into Nosk’s trap. They hadn’t the first time, but say it takes on the form of a bug they care about…Even the cleverest of bugs could fall for it.

She steels herself and delves further into the tunnel. More bodies, most of them dry and brittle-looking, but a few fresh ones, some bound in spider silk. So many surviving, uninfected bugs she failed to save. From the top of a ledge, with little fanfare, Ghost emerges from some corner with their lantern in hand.

Hornet holds her breath and crawls down to ground level. Fearing a trap, she creeps along in silence, doing well to keep her presence unknown.

The little Ghost stops at a fork in the path, then follows a faint scuffling sound from the right. There’s something, or someone, just ahead. A someone wearing a familiar red cloak, and carrying a familiar silver needle.

It’s _her_. She’s looking at a perfect mirror of herself in both appearance and mannerisms. Her doppelganger takes one look at Ghost and runs away from them, just as she is apt to do when she sees them. Deep, horrible dread takes a hold of her as she realizes her past actions could have inadvertently damned them. All those times she ran from them, forcing them to follow…

Hornet throws out her arm, conjuring up a web of silk strung with caltrops to impede their path. They can’t slow themselves in time, and end up ensnared in the trap. The sticky threads cling to their arms and legs, and struggling against it only tightens their bonds.

Trapping them like a fly wasn’t really what Hornet was going on, but it’s fine. She steps out of the shadows and approaches. They do not seem relieved at her presence, in fact struggling harder the closer she gets.

“That’s enough.” The command sounds far harsher than she intended. To rectify this, she puts a hand atop their head. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Ghost flinches away from her touch. It stings, but it’s Hornet’s own fault for the way she has treated them in the past. She sighs, long and heavy, as she cuts away the webbing. They fall right into her arms when the final thread is cut, and she swears she sees faint color bloom in their shell.

It’s quite obvious to her now: not only are they intimidated by her, but they’re not used to physical contact. Yet now that she’s holding them, she finds it hard to put them down. It’s different from when she rescued them in Kingdom’s Edge, when she had picked them up like a sack of flour. It’s _intimate_. They are a comforting weight in her arms, despite their chilly temperature, and she feels their chest heave against hers with each nervous breath. She settles a hand against the back of their shell, and wonders if the Hollow Knight ever felt this secure and comforted when they held her.

Hornet sets them down, and without thinking, straightens out their cloak. When she realizes what she has down, she draws herself to her full height and clears her throat. “What you just saw was a creature that uses familiar faces to deceive its prey. Had you kept on as you were, it would have taken you by surprise.”

They both look down the tunnel. Neither of them can see Nosk anymore, but the light of Ghost’s lantern makes it pretty clear that it’s a one-way road. They might even be close to its nest.

Hornet flinches when something cold touches her palm. It’s Ghost, fumbling to stretch their stubby fingers around her hand. They settle for a good grip on her thumb and what she thinks is an expectant look. Considering she just squeezed them like a stuffed toy, she has no room to complain. It is still a surprise, though, that they’d want anything to do with her after how callously she has behaved towards them.

Being around them—and Grimm—has opened a floodgate inside of her. All of the loneliness that had built up in her over the years is now making itself known, and the enormity of it scares her. Before, she didn’t care much if other bugs liked her or not. But now, all of a sudden, Ghost’s opinion is very important.

“You wish for me to accompany you?” She is unsurprised when Ghost nods. They give her hand a squeeze and lead her onward into the darkness. It strikes Hornet as odd that there’s so little dirt here. They must be quite a ways underground, even by Deepnest’s standards, if there’s no residual matter from the Fungal Wastes and Greenpath. The air is stale-smelling, with hints of decay when they pass by a corpse.

Ghost stops by each one to wave what appears to be a bubble wand. She has never seen an instrument like this in her life, never learned about it in the brief formal schooling she had received. What’s strange is that it doesn’t have any markings of Hallownest that would normally be present on a weapon, if that’s what it is, but she doubts it. And that’s when she remembers that she _has_ seen something like this, in the Resting Grounds in the far east of Hallownest. That peaceful place had been decorated with spirographs, for lack of a better word, and served as the kingdom’s graveyard.

Hornet is only familiar with Deepnest’s burial rites, so she has no idea what Ghost is doing. But she can safely assume that they are paying their respects.

The corpses eventually thin out, though, to be replaced by thick, uneven webbing on the walls and ceiling. The two push through a wall of the stuff, and then another. At the end of it all is a wide cavern untouched by all but the wildest of beasts in the deepest caverns. The corpses of bugs hang from the ceiling: Devouts, dirtcarvers, and Vessels. There are so many Vessels. Hornet and Ghost stop cold to look into the dozens of hollow eyes watching them from their suspended graves.

Nosk, still in their Hornet disguise, is standing on raised platform in the center of the cavern. It sees the two of them, and its form begins to shift. Hornet takes a step back and readies her needle, but Nosk doesn’t immediately lunge. Its horns grow longer with a single point at the end, and its mask grows two extra pairs of eyes. Hornet can only watch in horror and disgust as it takes on the form of her mother.

But it doesn’t stop there. It changes again, sampling the bugs still in Hornet’s memory. Its body lengthens, and she is now face to face with a mockery of the Midwife. It shrinks, and a lightless version of her father stands before her. Then it’s Queen Vespa, before she grew too big to leave the Hive. The Hive Knight, the White Lady, the Hunter, the Great Knights, Ghost, weaverlings and baby bees she befriended when she was small, even other Vessels—all these forms bleeding into each other as Nosk decides how to taunt her.

It even morphs into Grimm, but there’s something wrong with his appearance. His horns are taller; shell and cloak both are bright red. Hornet is taken aback by this. In the stories, no one ever mentioned Nosk getting a disguise wrong.

All of this happens within a quarter of a minute at best, and then it’s the eyes of the Pure Vessel that are staring her down. She picks a handful of caltrops from her cloak and moves to throw them, but Ghost rushes in with their nail drawn. Their blade crashes into Nosk’s mask with a fierce clanging noise. It responds with a shriek, and gets on all fours. Only a feral creature such as Nosk could have the audacity to bastardize her sibling’s visage, to retain its features even after its body splits open to reveal its true form. Just looking at it makes her carapace itch.

She gives herself a final scratch on the back of her neck, and jumps into the fray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason I haven't posted anything lately is because I was binging the Adventure Zone: Balance. I cried like a little bitch at the end of Story & Song and I kind of want to write TAZ fanfiction now?? But also I have a ton of wips rn. Like six of them, and most of them are multichapters (and I'm already in the long haul for this one, purity is fake, & mothlight). Anyway thanks for reading! I don't feel like writing another combat scene so I'm just gonna skip that haha


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *CONTENT WARNING: MEDICAL TRAUMA*
> 
> 1) The idea of Hornet having wings initially came from fanart by hivemindomega on tumblr, but it seems that many other artists and writers also share that idea. I still think I should credit them for the initial inspiration. I wrote a molting scene with cagnition, for whom this is all written for, before either of us had properly written fanfiction for each other  
> 2) I just really really like writing ships with a nurturing dynamic. What's the point if Grimm and Hornet don't tend to each other's wounds and grievous illnesses  
> 3) It has been almost a month since I updated this fic. OOPS. I promise I didn't forget about it, I just take a while to start things sometimes

Hornet’s shell itches. It’s different from the usual mundane itch, but she doesn’t understand why. She thought it to be a rash, picked up from some plant in Greenpath, but a thorough check of her body revealed no unusual marks. Mentally, she runs through a list of potential hazards that could have left her body feeling scratchy and stiff. She hasn’t run into any bugs that could have bitten and poisoned her. The effects of the venomous plants in Greenpath are well-documented by her and the Hunter, and none of them match up. None of her injuries from Nosk were minor.

She feels a hand on her leg, and there’s Ghost, staring at her as they so often do. They pat her a few times, and the natural cold of their body feels like spikes—something that has never bothered her before. It pronounces the feverish heat coursing through her. The only cold spring, to her knowledge, is the Blue Lake, but she doesn’t have it in her to make the trek.

“What is it, little Ghost?” She kneels to her level, and is met with a hand on her forehead. Small gesture it may be, it reminds her of how the Midwife or her mother would care for her when she was small and sick. A flush creeps up her neck. “There’s no need for that. I do not feel ill.”

That is a lie, but one to keep Ghost from becoming distracted. They’ve much to do in Hallownest, and she cannot waylay them with her own problems. This is the most she has seen them in a while, but their wear and tear is obvious. An early childhood spent among Weavers has given her an eye for how clothing degrades over time, but it doesn’t take a critical eye to see how tired they are.

“You are not in the best state, yourself.” She leans forward, and gestures to her back. “Come. I’ll take you back to the surface to recuperate.”

They climb on, and wrap their arms around her neck. The Nightmare Flame stored into their cloak is pressed between the two of them like a heartbeat, and though the heat is nigh unbearable, Hornet doesn’t complain. Deepnest is not a good place to stop and rest.

Hornet has never been one for the Stagways, so the way back up is long. Not wanting to go through the Mantis Tribe, she claws her way up through an unconventional path into the unclaimed parts of the Fungal Wastes, and goes straight up from there. Ghost is quiet and still against her back the entire time, but tenses up when they pass the hissing pools of acid. It’s easy to guess why.

When they’ve reached they comparatively silent Forgotten Crossroads, Hornet feels their fingers kneading into her back. She never thought herself a ticklish bug, but this makes her shoulders hunch. They dig a single fingertip into her shoulder, trace out something and then repeat the motion when she doesn’t react. Anyone even a tiny bit less sharp than Hornet wouldn’t have realized what they were doing, because finger-spelling had been a lost art in Hallownest for a long time.

‘Why’, is the first word they spell out. The second word is ‘kind’. Hornet slows and stops. They’re at the bottom of a great shaft, and on one of the ledges she sees the flora of Greenpath spilling out onto the cold, dark stone.

“‘Why am I being kind to you?’” she guesses. They nod against the back of her head. The answer to that deserves more time than it would take to dart up the shaft with her needle. She jumps onto the first platform, focusing on how the metal rocks and rattles beneath her feet. All the time taking shortcuts and practically flying from place to place has made her forget the solidity of the kingdom she had sworn to protect.

Hornet takes a deep breath, unsure of where to start. From the beginning would be appropriate. “When I first saw you, I assumed you’d be like the others: felled by my blade, or by the dangers of this kingdom. At best you were another wayward soul. At worst, the undoing of what keeps Hallownest in precarious balance.”

Ghost leans full against her now, listening to her words reverberate through her tired, hollowed-out body. “I followed you after our first encounter. I wanted proof that you were worth feeling something. In doing so, I put a burden on you. You were the one who had to work for that connection. I’m sorry.”

About halfway up, she wonders if she could leave Ghost here and part ways into Greenpath. As if sensing her hesitation, Ghost hugs her neck. So Hornet continues upward. She might as well bring them all the way back to the old well.

“I’ve spent so long thinking that there was no point in forming bonds. But I...” Hornet sighs out. She has never trusted anyone enough to tell them these thoughts. She has to wonder if she trusts Ghost well enough to confide in them like this. No matter the answer, her words just seem to stop working.

Ghost plucks at her cloak, but she does not speak again until they’ve reached the reached the chain leading up into Dirtmouth. Before she can kneel, they climb over her shoulders and jump to the ground. They stumble, and Hornet puts a hand on their shoulder so they won’t fall.

“I’ve business to attend to in Greenpath,” says Hornet. “I will be there for the foreseeable future. If you have need of me, go towards Lake Unn.”

She looks over her shoulder on the way out, and sees them waving at her.

Hornet soars across the shaft, and lands light as a feather in the tunnel leading out of the Crossroads. The verdant caverns are home to various medicinal plants, including dock leaf, which she is already looking forward to rubbing on her inflamed chitin. It has gotten to the point that just bending her limbs chafes and irritates. It is a testament to her endurance that she ferried Ghost all the way up with minimal twitching.

The worst place it hurts is on her back. No matter how many times she stops to scratch, the relief only lasts for a moment before the scratchy, painful sensation starts up again. Hornet feels like she could cry with relief when she finally sees the dock leaves near a non-acidic creek. With more patience, she could have made a salve, but now it takes everything she has to not throw herself onto the plants and crush them. She tears away a handful of leaves and smashes them against her back. The cooling effect is immediate, and makes things a little more bearable.

When Hornet takes her hand away, the leaves are smeared with blood and chunks of flesh.

She stares at it for a good long moment, reaches behind herself, feels a large wet patch against her cloak.

“What is this…?”

Hornet winces when she touches the wound directly. That first slight sting blooms into sharp, searing pain. It spreads slowly, but she is still taken off guard. The dock leaves fall from her hands, useless, but she would have kept them had her joints not seized up. She falls forward into the moss, twitching and salivating. The involuntary struggles and spasms of her body make it impossible for her to focus.

It agonizes Hornet both physically and mentally, but she casts her needle away. If she loses control of her body or loses consciousness, she does not want to roll onto her weapon and cut herself. With or without it, she would still be helpless if something attacked her. Her vision is all stars, and the steel of her blade is a silver meteor. When it had first been bestowed upon her, the handle had wound with a silky red ribbon. Its shredded remains have by now disintegrated and become one with the ash of Kingdom’s Edge. Hornet wonders if it’s time for her to join it.

There is then a sensation like a pinched nerve in her back, and Hornet screams. It’s a sound she hasn’t heard from herself in years and years, not once during all the hundreds of painful and scary things that happened to her. She screams and all the maskflies startle away with cries of their own. The effort of it sets her head throbbing.

She has two options: curl up in the moss, or get into the stream. The latter would be the best choice, but there runs the risk of drowning in less than ten inches of water. Hornet sees an easy compromise: drag herself to the stream’s edge, and dip her feet in. She turns her head towards the water, watching it from that insurmountable distance that should’ve been just a few steps.

* * *

Time passes strangely when one drifts in and out of consciousness. The powerful grip of fatigue has muted Hornet’s initial panic, so each time she awakens, she observes her pain from behind a fog. During one such instance, she mulls over the pain in her back. That pinched, tight feeling has extended to her shoulders and makes moving her arms impossible. It’s stiff all over, right down to her fingers. She tries to move her thumb, and the muscles where it connects with her wrist ache so strongly that she twitches.

The next time she wakes up, it’s because her feet are cold and numb from being in the stream for so long. With great effort, she bends her knees, which snap and crack while she pulls her feet out of the water. With far less effort, she turns her head and sees blood and pus welling up from the ankles down. She tries to remember what plants were good for that, for preventing infections of the mundane kind. Was it aloe? Feverfew?

All this wondering follows her into her dreams, where she rushes aimlessly through waist-high fields of grass and weeds. Thorns catch in her cloak, leaving tears when she pulls herself free. Every vine seems to be placed specifically to trip her. It would have been easier to pull herself across the ceiling, but the ceiling is gone. In its place is a wide black emptiness that goes on and on. No matter how far she throws her needle, there is nothing for it to catch onto.

So distant that she doesn’t see them at first are winking white lights, like siblings’ eyes watching her struggle. It is the night sky from the Hollow Knight’s favorite storybook, menacing. Not only does it cover the sky, but it also stretches down to where the walls should have been. Yet there is no end to it, so that the resulting landscape is hellishly wide open. Hornet has spent most of her life in a closed world, protected from the surface by the subterrane, sheltered on the surface by cliff sides and perpetual overcast. Here the world is flat and covered in plants she can’t remember the names of, ones that are hostile towards her.

Something like a Fool Eater springs up from the dirt and snaps its jaws at her. She makes quick work of it with her needle, immediately after feeling exhausted. The dirt beneath her knees is cold and dry; scooping some into her hand reveals it to be black sand. Somewhere, in a direction she can’t place, she hears the crash of waves.

Hornet remembers a lighthouse, and ships that glided atop the waves like black Aluba. These images are so vivid to her that she believes she has lived them. She scans the horizon for those winglike sails, to come and bear her out to sea. Just when she thinks she sees them, a red glow in the corner of her eye disrupts her. Hornet stands, and sees him standing in a circle of grass which has flattened itself against the earth in awe of his presence. Behind him, the world is hazy and red. She thinks there is something in that mist, but it refuses to come into focus.

Hornet gets up, and a path opens in the grass for her to walk to him. He is different, with taller horns, and a red shell that she swears she has seen before. She has seen him a thousand times before this, but this is also the first time they have met. He is Grimm, but he is not Grimm. The only certain thing is that she is drawn to him. She, a vessel lost at sea, pulled in by the tide of his extended hand.

She places her hand in his warm palm, and when he bows his head to kiss it, the heat travels to her shell. The landscape around her is distorting: the vines on the ground becoming veins, plants browning and withering away. Hornet shivers and steps closer to him, and he in turn kneels down to her level.

“Did you see a lighthouse?” she asks. It wouldn’t have been her first question if she were awake, but dreams have a way of muddling one’s mind. “I thought there might be one nearby. I saw the ocean, and I believe I was expecting a boat...”

Grimm lifts his head and looks towards the horizon. “It is a ways off. Will you walk with me?”

Hornet nods. She expects him to lead her by the hand, so it’s quite the surprise when he picks her up instead. Because of his great size, he can carry her in one arm with ease. From this new vantage point, she can now see into the distance. The sky is leaking black columns into the tumultuous, swollen ocean. Each wave is high enough to threaten the plain they stand upon. She grips his cloak, and in turn feels his hand upon her back.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she says, and that could mean a lot of things. The ocean. Her siblings. Her unconscious body outside of the Dream Realm. Rather, the Nightmare Realm. Not even her Void blood could protect her from the call of the Infection, in the old days. The Dream Realm was bright and blossoming, whispering words that had been tempting to a younger, more vulnerable Hornet. She still doesn’t know how she managed to resist. This world is raw and uncultivated, but does not try to consume Hornet the way the Infection’s dreams did.

“Nightmares make more sense once you’ve realized what they represent,” says Grimm. He rubs between her shoulder blades, and she winces. “My apologies. Now, see, this is the purging I spoke of. Many a bug have buried their pain so deeply that they are unable to fathom it. Not even dreams or nightmares may save them from the terrible way it manifests.”

None of this makes sense to Hornet, but dreams and nightmares seldom do. Her father might have taught her dream interpretation, had he lived. The pain of his absence is like a scab she can’t stop picking. If she had been born sooner, if she had been old enough to remember him and her mother better, if only…

“You’ve been through a lot,” Grimm says, out of the blue. He strolls with her along the coast, where the smell of salt is most pronounced. A trail of scorched grass stretches far behind him, adding a vague campfire scent to it all.

“Well, a century is a long time.” There, far out to see, are the ships she was looking for. She starts to climb out of Grimm’s arms, but he holds her fast. It’s for the best, she supposes. There’s no boat for her to take out into those turbulent waters.

“A long time to bear the world on your shoulders. I often wondered about you during that time.”

“Is that why you came here?”

Grimm shakes his head. “It was only because the torch was lit.”

Hornet fidgets, then finally rests her head against his shoulder. This kind of comfort has long been a luxury unavailable to her, and she wonders now how she ever went without it. The decades of alternating solitude and violence have weight upon her and given her no respite; even now, this is only a temporary comfort. She cannot rest until she has seen the little Ghost’s journey through to the end.

“Would you have come for me anyway?” Hornet asks. She has no reservations about being candid in her own dreams or nightmares. Grimm’s presence only strengthens this sense of security. Had he met her in the waking world, in this moment, she would have acted just the same.

“I tried, at first, but you had disappeared. I thought you to be dead all this time.” He dips his head. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when you first appeared before me.”

“It is a shame, then, that I failed to recognize you. You must have been quite lonely.” Hornet pauses. “As was I. I could have bonded with my remaining siblings, but I was so terrified of them breaking the Seals that I fought them all off. There was a little one in Greenpath, not long before I met Ghost. They had four horns and a cloak made from moth’s wings. They were the weakest one I had encountered thus far, but I still convinced myself it was necessary.”

The worst part is that she can’t even bring herself to cry for them. The little Vessel had cried, of course; their stretched their arms out pleadingly as tears rolled down their cheeks. Up until the very end, they had struggled to live. “There was nothing I could do for it.”

Grimm strokes her back and lets her talk. They both know that no words of comfort will assuage her guilt. Anything that could be said of the situation is obvious to her. All he does is hold her.

“I don’t know if I didn’t try because they were beyond my help, or if I just didn’t think it was worth it for them to live in these ruins. I think it was the latter. I still fought to protect my mother and the other two Dreamers, though I knew they’d never again have the chance at life that my siblings had.”

Then Grimm finally speaks, and he says, “The responsibility of choosing who lives and dies should have never been yours to bear.”

* * *

Hornet is back in Greenpath, and she isn’t alone. Disoriented, she thinks she’s being attacked and reaches for her needle. Right—she tossed it away so she wouldn’t hurt herself. She twists around and sees it clutched in the Ghost’s little paws. When she tries to swipe it from them, Grimm catches her hand.

“Easy, now. You’re in a bad way,” he says, and the details of her dream come flooding back to her with a fresh wave of pain. She cries out and reflexively digs her claws into Grimm’s hand. Whatever happened to her has gotten worse since she passed out, so much that she can’t even form words.

Grimm is telling Ghost, “Just climb onto my back for now. We’ll be there in the blink of an eye.”

Hornet tries to discern what he’s talking about, but then he’s lifting her into his arms, and the disturbance makes her seize up. The next moment, the world becomes a blur of red and black, and the burble of the stream is replaced by the howling wind of Dirtmouth. The sudden shift in surroundings is too much for her, and she leans over Grimm’s arm and retches.

“Oh, dear,” is the only thing she hears Grimm say before her hearing organs begin ringing. She wants out of this sticky cloak and out of her own skin. She wants to lie down in a freshly-woven web. She wants her parents, and Hollow, but they’re all gone. Hornet squeezes her eyes shut and chokes back a sob. There’s too much happening at once, and she is too helpless to even return Grimm’s embrace.

He’s taking her somewhere, up up up, then forward, then flinging a door open and turning on a faucet. He peels her cloak off, inadvertently taking off more of her chitin in the process and causing her to howl and struggle all the way into the water. She doesn’t notice Ghost in the doorway until Grimm says something to them, and then over the top of the basin she sees the tips of their horns scurry past. They fetch a red bottle from the shelf, and bring it back to Grimm.

The gears in Hornet’s mind turn. That’s the bottle Grimm told her to stay away from when he lent her the bathroom. Now he’s filling the cap with a trembling hand. With a difficult look on his face, he empties it into the tub. Swirls of red appear in the black-stained water, and Hornet feels a burning sensation crawl up her body. It would be mesmerizing if she weren’t distracted by the chitin sloughing off her body. Underneath she is still the same, but softer, almost velvety in texture. Hornet sinks lower into the tub and whimpers; her throat is raw and she can’t scream anymore.

All the while, Grimm watches with a death grip on the rim of the tub, alarmed and only moving to cup the back of her head when she slides down. The sharp and unyielding pain has become a prickling burn with an underlying, bruised soreness.

The water is completely black when Grimm lifts her from it. She is reminded of the Abyssal sea, which she has never seen in person, but knows that each of her siblings came from its waters. That is probably how she looks right now, like a new Vessel to be handled with care and dried off and carried away. She thinks that’s the end of it when Grimm wraps her in a towel and brings her to his quarters, but then he asks, “Have all of your molts been this...” He waves his hand uncertainly. “...Traumatic?”

“Molt?” Hornet looks up from where she has been laid on her stomach. Her words are coming out like molasses. “I had my last molt twenty years ago.”

“Then it’s no wonder. Bugs molt well into adulthood.” Grimm readjusts the towel so it is draped over her lower half. “That is what the red bottle was for: speeding up the process for myself, though I had to use a minute amount to help you along safely.”

He’s touching along her back, _hmms_ contemplatively, and looks to the doorway. “Ghost, friend, please bring a pitcher of water and a glass upstairs. Brumm, too, and tell him to bring the child.”

Hornet has no idea what use the Grimmchild would be during a molt. Back in Deepnest, the children were always shooed away when another spider was molting, be it adult or juvenile.

“Anyways, considering the environment you were in, it is no wonder. Though...I do recall the Wyrm warning me about your unusual molts.” Grimm hooks his claw beneath something in Hornet’s back, and she grimaces. “Your elytra are very small. The spitting image of your father.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Hornet says, suddenly anxious. She hears two pairs of footsteps approach the door, and buries her face in the pillow.

“They protect the wings, dear. You’re molting into a pair of wings.” Grimm leans over her and, with a surgeon’s precision, digs the tip of his claw right between her shoulders. “There’s quite a bit of stuck shed, but I can see beneath. I’d like to get this out of the way immediately before the wings can be damaged.”

Hornet can’t speak, and it has nothing to do with any physical discomfort. Wings. She has lived for a good century without them. If they’re like her father’s, that’s six extra appendages to account for. 

“The buds would have grown in during previous molts,” she protests weakly, hoping to reason her wings out of existence. Whether wings are a good thing or not, this is still too big a change to her body for her to just _cope_ with.

“There are some things even I cannot explain.” Grimm is slicing down the remaining molt and peeling it away a bit at a time, not even stopping to acknowledge Ghost, who has crawled onto the bed next to Hornet. They squeeze her hand and pet the back of her head with the airs of someone even older than they already are, and she does not feel patronized by this.

Brumm is standing somewhere nearby, talking to Grimm in hushed  tones and holding a small basket filled with  _something_ . She doesn’t see what they are, because the sight of her molt being peeled off her back is so revolting that she cannot keep her eyes open. There is the sound of metal, of rustling sheets, a warm, wiggling pressure against her arm. The Grimmchild chirps and nibbles one of her horns, and she now understands that this is meant to be a distraction from what’s happening to her back. Her wings had been trapped and pinched inside of her back, and now spill forth all at once with a warm gush of Void, or blood, or both. Muscles she didn’t know she had twitch, and she is suddenly aware of six soft, wet wings struggling to move.

I t’s all she can focus on. She doesn’t register how Brumm comes and goes, and how even Divine lingers in the doorway at one point. Ghost keeps their silent vigil by her side, still holding her hand even when her palms grow clammy.

One by one, and with great effort, she begins to move her wings. They are wet and wrinkled, uncomfortable enough against her body that she wants to retract them. And then she sees Grimm watching intently, fluttering his own wings in demonstration, and she laughs into her hand.

“I’m not doing this to amuse you, you know,” Grimm says, but he can’t hide his smile. He scoots closer to her and holds out his hands. “It’ll be easier if you sit up. Here.”

He all but hoists her up so she’s sitting on her knees, but she’s still so wobbly that she topples right against his chest.  Ghost  has to hold the Grimmchild back, so she doesn’t lunge at her. So small, but already able  to sense that something is wrong.

“I’m fine,” she says to nobody in particular. Grimm is right: it’s easier to move her wings this way, but after only a few beats, she goes limp against him. “I just need a moment.”

Her body is hot and cold at the same time. Grimm pulls something around her—not the towel, a  blanket. Warm fleece for her wings to rest against while he holds a cup to her mouth. Ghost and the Grimmchild watch in reverence as Hornet takes the vessel and drinks until she coughs and sputters. Grimm pours her another cup and she drains that too, and then another, until she’s dizzy and full of cold water.

A nd, of course, Grimm fusses over her and props her against the pillows so she’s not flat on her stomach. The Grimmchild immediately worms her way between Hornet’s arms and nuzzles into the crook of her neck, which means she’s not going anywhere.  Ghost is bunching up the bedclothes around her into a makeshift nest. It’s far better than lying prone in the middle of the woods, that’s for sure.

“Rest, now. It has been a long day.” Grimm cups her cheek, and the exhaustion that was creeping up on her is now hanging onto her shoulders. Strangely enough, it gives her the same sense of security she had when they met in her dream. Falling asleep should have been something to fear. He’s making her feel safe, she realizes, and sleepily takes hold of his hand.

“Don’t go,” she mumbles. This day seems to have lasted a year. She doesn’t have the strength to end it by herself. “Don’t leave...Stay.”

“Shh. I’m here.” Grimm kisses her forehead, which is the last thing she remembers before she yields to a long, dreamless sleep.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for death, but don't worry it'll get better
> 
> Also I took some creative liberties with the whole Shade mechanic. Thanks for reading!

Ghost wakes up from the soundest sleep they’ve had in their life, and they’ve lived for a _long_ time. It is the first time in a while they’ve wondered whether it’s morning or night; before, they were only concerned about getting enough sleep to carry them through the next leg of their endless wandering. Sometimes they have dreams about that endless cycle, and awaken in a sweat.

This was a pleasant, dreamless sleep, and they are the first to wake up. Hornet is sprawled out with the Grimmchild tucked beneath her chin, breathing deep, easy breaths and fluttering her new wings. Ghost crawls over and touches one of them experimentally, and is pleased to find that it’s dry. The wings resemble their own—the ones they acquired while traversing the Ancient Basin. It’s a wonder to them that such delicate wings such as their own and Hornet’s can exist in the same world as the Grimmchild’s, velvety-soft but tough enough to withstand any sort of tumble and scrape.

They draw their hand away when Hornet winces, and then they sit there, wondering if they should get out of bed or not. There’s so much weighing on their shoulders that it’s hard for them to relax at all. The longer they stay at rest, the longer Hallownest remains the way it is, the longer that the bugs they’ve met—those who are still alive—are in danger. The longer the Grimmchild has to wait for the Ritual’s completion. They get the gist of what they’re supposed to do for both these cases, but the details are still foggy to them. If Hallownest were not so decayed, more information might have survived.

Ghost is closer to completing the Ritual than finding the final Dreamer, but they can’t complete the Ritual without the Grimmchild. They prise her from Hornet’s arms and bring her into their own, where she struggles and whines until they wrap her tail around their waist. She likes to cling, and they don’t see her dropping the habit any time soon. That will be a problem when she inevitably grows even bigger. She’s almost the size of them now, and they’ve only just started taking care of her.

Meanwhile, they’ve stayed the same size from the moment they hatched well into adulthood. It’s not fair, not fair at all.

Before they leave, they look over their shoulder at Hornet. In the few times they crossed paths, she struck them as someone who was incapable of vulnerability or peace. How easy it is to achieve both just by sleeping, which is also something Ghost thought she was incapable of. They can’t explain why; it just felt that way. They’d like to have curled back up in bed with her, but they’re afraid of what she’ll do upon awakening. She may have stopped trying to kill them, but still…

Downstairs, Grimm is waiting for them in the center of the stage. When he sees them approach, he gets down on one knee to be at level with them. “We shan’t perform our dance while the child sleeps,” he says. “I would advise you to use this time to rehearse.”

Ghost, with one hand, takes out a scrap of paper and their quill. _‘Fight rehearse or dance rehearse?’_ they write, using their knee to hold down the paper.

“Whichever you prefer. You will be doing both.” Grimm shrugs, and with that shrug, his form twists and disappears into thin air. He reappears behind them, and holds out his hands. “I’ll watch her while you get ready.”

They hand the Grimmchild to him without complaint, sensing that perhaps he just wants to spend time with her. It has been all but stated outright that that Ghost’s guardianship of the child is a permanent arrangement. The implication that Grimm will be unable to take care of his own child is foreboding, indeed. For that reason, they are too nervous to ask what the end of the Ritual entails.

So they leave the Grimmchild with him, and walk to the entrance of the tent, to Brumm and his unending accordion music. They’ve learned to tune it out at a distance, but up close it starts to grate on them. This is meant with no offense towards Brumm himself, whose frown Ghost can practically hear under his mask.

“Hrm,” he grunts, pausing in his music. “You will be completing the Ritual soon?”

Ghost nods. They hate leaving things unfinished, after all. Brumm shifts his weight from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable about something but unwilling to say it. Foreboding, but intriguing. Even the smallest things pique their interest. They don’t know what to ask first—their hand would hover uselessly over the paper, surely. They tilt their head inquisitively and put a concerned hand on Brumm’s arm, hoping that this gesture of concern will be enough to make him talk.

“Ah.” Brumm winces as if in pain, and Ghost jerks their hand back. “No, no, it’s nothing. I apologize.”

He shrinks away from them and continues his song in earnest. Ghost reluctantly turns away, and leaves the main tent.

Unlike Brumm and Grimm, Ghost is nervous about visiting Divine. It’s how she processes their charms and the exorbitant fees she charges that does it. There’s nothing they can afford to give her right now and therefore no reason to visit her, but they peek inside anyway. Of course, before they can disappear into the night, she notices them and crows in greeting.

“Ohhh, come to visit? Come in, come in!” Divine waves a claw, and they have no choice but to be polite and obey. They sit on the cushion she offers them, and receives a cup of floral tea that is far too bitter for their palate. They cradle the china awkwardly in their hands. Divine looks so happy to have company that they decide not to ask her anything, so as not to ruin her mood.

“Making progress on the Ritual? Oh, it’ll be a spectacle.” She laughs and waves a claw. “All fire and brimstone. I’ll be in here the whole time, of course.”

Ghost wonders about Hornet back in the main tent. They don’t like the idea of her being in there while they’re fighting, but if it really were dangerous, Grimm would put her somewhere else beforehand. It’s clear he cares for her a lot.

No one cares enough about Ghost to prioritize them like that, except for the Grimmchild. This would have cheered them more if their fellow wanderer, Quirrel, hadn’t just up and disappeared on them.

They don’t want to think about that right now.

Feeling as bitter as their tea, they bid farewell to Divine and go back to check on Hornet. They stop short of the door behind which she is resting, and turn back. Their arms and heart both feel empty and they know Hornet isn’t going to fill them. She only saved them because they proved themselves strong enough to bear the King’s Brand. Yes, she held them in Deepnest, fought by their side and carried them when they were tired. She even apologized to them. But it is so easy to doubt all of that, because they know she would have forgotten them if they died early on. They sit with their back to the door, turning over the last conversation they had with her before she molted and struggling to remember everything she said.

They go inside and climb back onto the bed, whereupon they shake Hornet awake. She props herself up on her elbow, all bleary-eyed and confused.

“Little Ghost? What is it?” She puts a hand to her mouth and yawns, then stops short when Ghost throws themselves against her. They approach this the same way they’d jump off a particularly steep ledge: do it before they become too frightened and turn back. She puts a hand against their back to hold them against her chest, a huge relief when they thought she was going to nudge them away.

Instead of rehearsing as was suggested of them, they spend their time taking a nap with Hornet.

* * *

Ghost awakens much like they did the first time, except slightly clammy and pressed against Hornet. She’s only half-asleep this time, too tired to cover her mouth when she yawns. Ghost catches a glimpse of her fangs, which are terribly interesting, but they’ll inquire about it later. They’ve kept Grimm waiting long enough.

The Grimmchild is waiting for them in the main hall, and swoops on over to them, cheerful as ever. They bow their head for her to land on, and while supporting her weight, they make a quick run back outside to Dirtmouth. On the bench, they sort through their charms. With no idea of what’s coming next, they settle for their favorites, tried-and-true, ones that will boost their natural abilities around the board. After the first attempt, they’ll try different builds and see what works best.

They’ve gotten their charms in order and wiped down their nail. With a deep breath, they return to Grimm.

As they do with everyone and everything they fight, they start to look for weak spots. And there’s one, right on his chest. A stab wound that’s still healing. They’ve seen him with it before, but cannot remember where he got it.

It is no matter, Ghost thinks as the Grimmchild flies to her father’s cloak. The lights burst to life, casting the stage in a scarlet glow. The crowd of Grimmkin jostle and murmur, only to be drowned out by the blast of an organ. Both opponents bow to each other, and then the dance begins.

No amount of practice could have prepared Ghost for this dance. They’re reminded of the battle with the Mantis Lords, right at the doorstep of Deepnest, where they tried over and over to prove their mettle in a deadly ballet. This one is far more complicated than knowing when to move one way or the other, or when to jump. When they come too close, Grimm scuttles back on more legs than they thought he had. Bursts of fire erupt from his fingertips, burning their cloak and scorching their body. They’ve little time to heal before spikes spear at them from below. Their Shade explodes from their body. They are left to awkwardly pick up the remains of their shell and flee.

At the bench, they put themselves back together and pick out different charms. They ought to have a longer nail if they want to reach him.

They go back inside, bow, dance. Grimm’s wings shield him in a barbed balloon that would be comical if they didn’t have to worry about dodging a rain of fire. They take damage reaching him, and to their dismay find that he is impervious in this state. Then, their shell bursts.

The Elderbug is becoming increasingly nervous each time Ghost returns from the tent, all Shade and shell in hand, piecing themselves back to a solid form. They nod as a way of reassurance, and give Grimm another go. This time they fumble in the first steps of their dance, and are sent back in a far more sour mood.

This time they strike Grimm while he is bowing. The Troupe Master screeches at them with fury they didn’t think he was capable of, and the fight is over within minutes. Ghost spends five minutes on the bench catching their breath.

They must have attempted him nine times now, maybe ten. His moves are becoming easier to read, but he is so fast that Ghost can scarcely keep up. Ghost puts their face in their hands. At this rate, they’ll never defeat him. With a heavy heart, they return to him for another futile dance.

Something snaps inside of them this time. They are tired of doing this over and over, becoming fatigued and dispirited while Grimm only looks a little tired. He pauses, while Ghost is on the ground, to put a hand over his wound, the one on his chest that Ghost hasn’t been able to reach.

Ignoring their own pain, they dash to him in a scream of Void and drive their nail home. It happens fast: the crunch of armored chitin, a choked scream, an explosion of red. The spotlights go out, and the Grimmchild separates from him with a squeal, with an extra pair of wings and red plating on her body.

When the dust settles, Ghost is still straddling Grimm’s body. They wait for him to pull their nail out of his chest and sit up, perhaps congratulate them for winning. The Grimmchild circles the air, crying.

They wait, and wait, and wait, but Grimm doesn’t get up.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been soooo sooo sleepy lately which makes it hard for me to get anything done x_x thanks for your patience! we're in the home stretch!

The Nightmare King knew from the beginning that his time at the White Palace was temporary, but he expected more time than what he got. One morning, he wakes up and knows at once that towards the end of the month, the lantern will be lit and the Ritual will resume. He will leave this living, squirming kingdom for the Nightmare Realm, and his Vessel will birth the next Vessel in a dead land. The first Vessel shall usurp him as the Nightmare King. The cycle will continue, as it always does, but there will be no more rest stops. No more Hornet, who squirms and tantrums through her lessons until her exasperated tutor gives up and tells Grimm to come collect the unruly child, please. She hasn’t gotten many chances to see her mother these days, and it’s stressing her out.

For the first time since the Ritual began, the Nightmare King doesn’t want it to continue. The constant upheaval, the exhaustion of death and rebirth and dancing, never allowed to partake in what the living world has to offer. A Higher Being of nightmares and death, getting sick of his own trade. His sister would laugh at him if she knew. Now that he has had a taste of what actually living has to offer, he doesn’t want to give it up.

Another thing he knows, though, is that he can’t stay in Hallownest forever. This kingdom doesn’t have much longer, whether the Pale King realizes it or not. A newborn god such as the Pure Vessel can’t possibly contain his sister indefinitely. No land can last eternal.

The Nightmare King simply observes this and doesn’t interfere, because that’s not in his godly nature. There is nothing he can do for Hornet that would guarantee her a long, fulfilling life. He’ll definitely be dead before he can find out what will happen to her. The arms that held her and the voice that sang to her when she couldn’t sleep on her own will be burned up and gone, and he will leave behind no evidence that he was ever there for her. Not even memories. She is still so young that she’ll forget all about him.

That is his nature as a Higher Being, to be the patron of things dead, forgotten, and wiped clean from the world. He now understands why the Radiance was so defiant of her fate: she had not just one little spiderling princess, but scores of moths who loved her. He can understand why she’d turn violent over it, but then again, so many innocents have been caught in the crossfire. She turned on her old followers first.

While Grimm contemplates his mortality, Hornet spins wobbly webs all throughout the palace. He was instructed to stop her if she got out of hand, but who is he to stifle a child’s creativity? It’s great fun watching the retainers and visiting nobles get caught in spider silk, and to be pounced upon by a fierce but harmless little knight. He’s just there to pull her away before she can get in trouble.

One of the Great Knights, Ogrim, comes lumbering into the sitting room, impeded by the spider silk clinging to his body. He is one of the unfortunate victims of Hornet’s hunt. “Ah, your lordship,” he says with a quick bow, ever polite. “Have you seen the princess?”

“No, I’m afraid I’ve lost track of her.” Grimm crosses his legs and bounces his ankle. “But I believe she might be headed for the meeting room. You might want to hurry before she interrupts anything.”

Ogrim bounds off. The Nightmare King listens until he can’t hear him anymore, and then says, “It’s safe now.”

Hornet peeks out from beneath his cloak and giggles into her hands. This room, with its multitude of furniture and fancy baubles, is the perfect place for a spider to vandalize. There are just so many things to build webs on, and to wrap up like prey. Grimm tries not to laugh _too_ hard when she wraps up one of her father’s favorite chairs. That’ll just encourage her bad behavior—not that he hasn’t done that already through his inaction.

No good deed goes unpunished, Grimm learns, when Hornet pounces him. Her tiny claws dig into his cloak. He laughs, but not because he’s ticklish—it’s because she’s trying to cocoon him. A moving target is the best practice, after all, for when she’ll have to catch her own food. It is a laborious task for her, because he is such a big bug and she only has so much silk.

“Are you going to eat me?” Grimm asks. He picks Hornet up by the back of her dress, and twists around to bite at his wrist. Her fangs are harmless, devoid of the venom that would otherwise paralyze a lesser bug (though even the strongest poisons would be nothing to him).

“Yes!” Hornet kicks her legs. The Nightmare King cups her in his hands and grins, all teeth.

“Not if I eat you first.” He blows a raspberry on her belly, and she shrieks with laughter.

Yes, it would be ideal if things were always as peaceful as this.

* * *

Hornet wakes up alone, as she usually does. Her wings have dried so that she can move them with no difficulty but much clumsiness. Grimm had only helped her briefly with that before she grew exhausted and fell asleep. He could teach her the basics of flying without hurting herself, before she heads back down into the ruins. In turn, she could share the name she came up with for the Grimmchild. The hours she spent in bed provided her with plenty of time to think, and to have strange dreams that were nonetheless free of the Radiance’s influence.

After dressing, she goes to the bathroom to wash her face. She still can’t get over being in a real bathroom, with a nice mirror and readily available hot water. She thought she’d be spending the rest of her life camping, dealing with the inconveniences and dangers that living outside brought. Now she’s clean, wearing new clothes, well-rested, and sheltered from the elements. It still perplexes her a bit that Grimm would go through all this trouble for her, but he seemed happy to do so.

Naturally, she must repay him. In absence of his selflessness, she would have been forced to go through another molt on her own, and who knows what would have become of her. Granting a name to his child is a good start.

Speaking of which, she doesn’t see the little one anywhere. Ghost must have taken her with them, then. She’ll go downstairs and speak to Grimm while she waits for them to return.

To her pleasant surprise, Ghost and the Grimmchild are already back. She walks towards them, and then notices the body. The blood around it is an unnatural bright red, stained deep in its black and red cloak. Hornet forces herself to walk over to where Grimm is laying. The Grimmchild crawls forward to sniff at her father’s body, and is intercepted by Hornet picking her up. For once, the child does not want to be held, and continues to strain towards Grimm with plaintive mewls.

Bugs die all the time in Hallownest: useless, unavoidable deaths. It was as if the land itself had a mind of its own. It punished travelers, dragged them down into its rotting depths, and snuffed out even the bright and strong. Death was Hornet’s constant bedfellow, and she should really be used to it by now.

Hornet’s eyes sting. Here was someone who had treated her with a tenderness she had long forgotten, and now he’s dead. She’s holding the Grimmchild less to restrain her and more to comfort herself. This was clearly Ghost’s doing, and they are just as clearly distressed by it. At first, they don’t acknowledge Hornet’s presence. They bob back and forth, kneading their cloak between their fingers. Hornet makes a small noise to get their attention, so they are not startled when she touches their back.

“What happened here?” she asks, straining to keep her voice even. Ghost gestures stiffly to the wound on Grimm’s chest, reopened by their bloody nail. They don’t need to do anything else for Hornet to understand. A nail is a nail, no matter the skill level of its wielder. Ghost is clumsy and needs to work twice as hard as other bugs, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of serious harm. One can only be so careful with such a lethal weapon.

This might not have happened if she hadn’t previously injured him. She is just as complicit as Ghost is, unintentionally or not.

“He is a Higher Being. They do not die easily,” Hornet reassures Ghost, but she doesn’t believe her own words. The torch, the Ritual, the cycle of death and rebirth. Worst case scenario, she won’t see him again for decades, and she doesn’t know if she’ll live that long. If Ghost usurps the Hollow Knight, she’ll become their Dreamer, and that’ll be the end of it. Such a fate feels less like a sacred duty and more like a punishment, now that there are bugs she wants to be awake and alive for. She doesn’t want to let any of them go.

Hornet, still holding the Grimmchild, leans forward until her forehead touches Grimm’s arm. Ghost rubs her shoulder, and pads away to retrieve Brumm and Divine. She hears their voices around her, worried murmurs at the state of the Troupe Master. The Grimmchild, a warm weight against her chest, chitters. Now is when she should be standing up and speaking to the others, but she’s paralyzed. If she leaves his side, he’ll truly be gone.

“Hrm. This is not how the Ritual is meant to--” Brumm’s voice cuts off suddenly. Hornet looks up. The musician is simply not there. Divine, no longer smiling, is looking at the spot where he once was with her claws over her mouth. Hornet blinks, and she’s gone too.

Ghost, Hornet, and the Grimmchild all look at each other. The first time Hornet had visited the Troupe, it had just been a bad dream, but all of this is as real as the scream of the wind outside. The magic that Grimm brought to Dirtmouth is gone, and all the vibrance has gone with it. While Hornet was distracted, the bright red of the tent’s innards dimmed to a grayish brown. The only comfort in this situation is that the Grimmchild remains unaffected, albeit visibly frightened. Ghost makes a grabbing motion, and Hornet hands the child off to them.

“Little Ghost,” Hornet says, “What are we to do?”

Ghost taps their fingers against their mask, deep in thought, and then they retrieve a small wand from their cloak. Hornet has seen them swinging it around before. It looks like a toy, bearing a pattern she recognizes from the Resting Grounds. She’s therefore confused when they hand it to her. At best, it could be used as a bubble wand.

Clearly anticipating a question, Ghost swings their arm in demonstration. It’s meant to be used as a nail, but their hands are full with the Grimmchild. Is that really going to help…? She begins to question this, but one look at Grimm makes her forget her doubt. If there’s even the slightest chance this will help, she’ll take it. And so, she waves the wand over his body.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you're all wondering where I've been this month. Well, I've been working on this and other things. Towards the end, I was getting frustrated and anxious because so long had passed since I finished and posted anything. Thank god this thing is almost done x_x

Hornet knows without a doubt that she’s in a dream: her vision is static, with a red undertone. The ground is fleshy and undulates beneath her, a phenomenon entirely unheard of in Hallownest. Even the fluke-infested Waterways couldn’t completely cover the ground like this. She looks down, and sees what looks like the red, wet insides of some great beast. Horror fills her throat and erupts as a choked cry, but running to the wall provides no relief; it is just as live and warm. She looks around wildly for some kind of exit, and sees in the distance a glaring red light.

Once outside, she confirms that she was indeed inside a creature. It is freshly dead, and resembles something she once saw in the Queen’s private gardens—but far bigger, about the size of a small house. Her surroundings are harsh and provide little respite. There is no ceiling, only an expanse of cold crimson; the wind is strong; even the vegetation looks foreboding. Upon closer inspection, she recognizes them as the veins she had once seen in the Troupe, and in her nightmare. This must be the Nightmare Realm, she reasons, given its hellish quality. The ground feels like it’ll give way at any moment, thus her anxiety mounts as she crosses the stitched-up plains.

In the months leading up to the Pale King’s death, he had isolated himself in a beautiful dream realm. Hornet, in her youthful naivete, had therefore assumed that all the lands of Higher Beings were as ethereal. How wrong she was. The only similarity this place has to her father’s private dream is the lack of other bugs. But then, just as she’s thinking that, she sees a lone figure curled on the ground ahead of her. It’s some sort of mantis in a death curl, its red abdomen streaked with black. Unlike the corpse she had emerged from, this one has clearly been dead for a long time. Wind howls through its dried husk, resulting in a sound not unlike a flute.

Hornet, troubled by this, continues on. Might she find Grimm in a similar state? She shudders to think of it.

She feels the same lucidity here as she does when awake, but the Nightmare Realm still behaves very much like a dream would. One moment she’s in these living wastelands, the next she’s backstage in some theater. There is a ceiling here, thank Wyrm, one that goes so high up that she can hardly see it. The passage she’s standing in is narrow, with a flimsy shellwood wall to her left and a thick, impenetrable curtain to her right. From that direction, she hears the muffled sounds of singing, broken up every so often by theatrical shouting.

Hornet leans close to the curtain, listening for anything familiar. In today’s Hallownest, recorded music and orchestral performances are unheard of. She had kept her favorite songs in her memory for as long as she could after the kingdom’s fall, but inevitably they all faded away. Listening to this one feels like one of those long-lost songs has returned to her.

Hornet worms her way through the curtains and peeks out onto the stage, where nondescript bugs in colorful regalia sing and dance and stomp their way across the stage. The audience is packed, and she can just barely see the bugs in the orchestral pit.

One of the bugs turns its head towards her and makes eye contact, sending her scuttling back behind the curtains. She wasn’t supposed to be back here in the first place, and now that she’s been spotted, there’s no way the performers _won’t_ tell on her. She pulls her hood over her head and skirts along the backstage until she reaches the dressing room. A few bugs waiting their turn for the stage yelp and lift their legs, not wanting to step on the little princess scuttling across the floor. She finds her way to a hat box, tosses away its occupant, and burrows her way inside.

“Come back here!” calls a voice, and Hornet puts her hands over her eyes. The lid of the hat box is lifted away. She peeks out from behind her fingers, and sees the six eyes of Herrah’s mask.

“There you are. That’s enough running away,” Herrah sighs. The spiderling squeals angrily, the indignant cry of a child who hasn’t gotten her way. “Come along now, little shadow. Let’s leave these ladies alone.”

A few bugs gather at the doorway to watch Herrah leave. It’s hard for bugs _not_ to stare when the Queen of Deepnest comes ‘round, but Hornet can tell it’s out of wariness and fear rather than respect. She looks over her mother’s shoulder and sticks her tongue out at them, and they all duck back inside.

“You mustn’t stray from your nurse’s side. If this keeps happening, I’ll take you with me to my meetings,” Herrah warns her. They emerge into the warm, bright lobby. It’s empty, save for the ushers, and the bright red bug standing near the doors. He smiles at Hornet when they approach.

“I understand that spiderlings can be a handful, but please try to keep a better eye on her, Nightmare King.” However, she still deposits her child into his warm palms. A nurse has no use if you don’t let them do their job, after all.

“Oh, I’m trying. She’s an escape artist.” Grimm tickles Hornet’s belly, smile broadening as she giggles and squeaks. “But don’t do it again, little one. You’re so small that someone might step on you. Yes, they will.”

Herrah scoffs and opens her umbrella. The rain in this district of the city is coming down especially hard today, and far above Hornet sees mender bugs crawling along the ceiling. A raindrop splats between her eyes and startles her. She crawls into Grimm’s cloak and clings to his chest, seeking shelter from the chilly downpour. Any rain that hits his cloak evaporates and shrouds him in a cloud of steam.

“The play isn’t over yet,” says Hornet plaintively. The theater recedes behind them, and with it her hopes of returning to the auditorium. If not for the watchful eyes of her mother, she would’ve tried to go back.

“Do you remember what I said?” Herrah asks. Hornet nods. “I told you that if you could go out with your nurse as long as you did not stray from his side. And what did you do?”

“I went backstage,” answers the spiderling, so pleased with herself that Herrah and the Nightmare King must hold back their laughter.

“Yes,” says Herrah, once she has recovered. “You left his side.”

“Oh.” Hornet hangs her head. Most children, by now, would have started to fuss. Hornet, whose parents and guardians are unmovable and whose sibling is stone-faced in response to all tantrums, has learned early to accept the consequences of her misbehavior. If more of her siblings had survived, she wouldn’t have been so outnumbered, and thus would have been even more rambunctious than she was now.

But, more than that, she desires the affection of her family and friends too much to leave their arms most of the time. It is just that the allure of the capital appeals to her child’s curiosity. Her disappointment at leaving the theater early is replaced with the wonder of just seeing the City of Tears in motion. Compared to Deepnest, however, it is loud and bright, sometimes unbearably so. The glare of lanterns along the street is a sharp pinch that forces her to cover her eyes.

When Hornet opens her eyes, they’re already inside. Drowsy from the indoor heating, she rests her chin on the Nightmare King’s shoulder and contents herself to watch the rain pound against the windows. Far below, the memorial to the Hollow Knight cuts a forlorn figure in the city square.

“A fine view, is it not?” Herrah pauses before the window. “In small doses, Hallownest is beautiful. I am glad that you were born without bias towards this kingdom. What a small world you would have had to live in otherwise. Sometimes I wonder if I could have had more than my lot in life.”

Though she is wearing a mask, she reflexively puts a hand to her mouth to cough. The Nightmare King’s eyes widen in alarm when she abruptly drops to her knees.

“Madam?” His hand grazes her shoulder. “Shall I call someone?”

“Mama?” Hornet slips to the ground and totters over to her mother. The Beast, always so powerful, sounds like she’s choking on something. Her wet coughing shocks and frightens Hornet, whose first instinct is to remove her mask and give her some space to breathe. The six eyes that look upon her are glazed over and amber. Her saliva, dripping uncontrollably down her chin, is that same bright color and completely opaque.

“Mama?!” Hornet repeats, staggering backwards. Herrah reaches for her pleadingly, gurgles, and vomits on the carpet. All Hornet can do is stand in place and scream. How could this be? Her mother had never so much as been grazed by the Infection, resilient as she was towards temptation and visions of grandeur. She wouldn’t have been able to fulfill her role as a Dreamer if she had gotten sick.

That’s right—this isn’t how that day went. Hornet covers her eyes and turns away from the horrible scene, and through her fingers she sees it all unravel around her, like ribbons. What’s left is a black in every direction, blustering winds, and dark waves around her ankles. It is now so dark that Hornet has difficulty seeing her hands in front of her face.

Something like that did happen, come to think of it. Hornet scarcely remembers it, but she’s sure it was just her and her mother that day. They had gone to the theater together, and afterwards Herrah took to meet the cast. The backstage tickets had been provided by the Pale King, who refused to join them no matter how much Hornet begged. His absence disappointed her, yes, but nothing _terrible_ had happened that day.

“It wasn’t real. It was just a bad dream,” Hornet mutters, hugging herself for warmth. Down here, it is as freezing as the Abyss. Her wings are frozen to her back, but with some effort, she opens them up and lifts out of the water. In dream and nightmare both, flying comes easily to anyone. Now she has a taste of what it’ll be like when her wings strengthen and she learns how to fly properly.

“This is all just a bad dream,” she tells herself as she pushes against the wind. “None of this is real. I am asleep in Grimm’s tent...But that vision was so vivid.”

Her heart constrains when she remembers the look on her Herrah’s face. As has always been the case, Hornet couldn’t do anything to help her. There will be no going to her mother’s den, crying, as she had always done when she had a nightmare. No father to soothe her with his bioluminescence, no Pure Vessel to tuck her back into their shared bed. She’s afraid she’ll lose the little Ghost, too, when she has just gotten attached to them.

The wind picks up strength, and Hornet is blown away. She tumbles through the air, screaming. With nothing and no one to catch herself with, she is left in free fall, not knowing which side is up. She braces for the inevitable impact by tucking herself into a ball.

It’s a messy landing. First, she is thrown against a wall. With the wind knocked out of her, she tumbles through leaves and vines that tear at her cloak and carapace. The ground is bumpy and sends her rolling for a good several meters before hitting a boulder. She bounces off of that and finally comes to a still on a mix of mossy and rocky ground with the taste of blood in her mouth.

Hornet prods around her mouth with her tongue, wincing when she finds a cut on the inside of her cheek—a self-inflicted bite wound. What a vivid dream this is, that she can be in this much pain. She struggles to her feet, putting her hand to the boulder for support. Her hand dips into its mossy covering, and she falls in.

“Ah!” She and flails away from it, landing heavily on her knees. The bush grunts and rolls over. _That_ catches her attention.

“What... _who_ is that?” Hornet whispers as she rubs her arm. She crawls around the side of the bush, keeping as quiet as she can. Through a gap in the shrubbery, she sees a monstrous face with six eyes, closed in sleep. It’s the Hunter, right where she left him—except this isn’t Greenpath. It _looks_ like Greenpath, or some other place she’s been, but there are subtle, uncanny differences that tell her this isn’t anywhere she knows. Even the Hunter looks odd. For one, his leaves have turned red.

“It’s you,” Hornet says, not bothering to lower her voice. He’s a sound sleeper, and she’s confident that she won’t wake him up even if she speaks at a normal volume. But on the other hand, why should she let him sleep? He grunts and twitches, as if he’s having a nightmare.

Hornet feels around for her needle, thinking first to strike him with the blunt end. The absence of its weight from her back almost causes her to panic, but she remembers that it’s still with her. This is just a dream.

And so, Hornet cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “Wake up!”

He doesn’t so much as stir. Hornet kicks him in the leg, and promptly hops back holding her sore foot. That’s nothing, only a minor setback. She won’t give up so easily.

“Wake up!” she shouts, louder this time. She climbs to the top of his head and yanks at his mantle. The Hunter groans and waves his hand, searching for the pest that is interrupting his sleep. He winds up smacking himself in the face, after Hornet dangles some thread in front of his mask.

“Agh!” The Hunter startles awake, and jolts into an upright position. “Who’s there?!”

Hornet, still hanging on to his mantle, leans forward until she’s hanging upside-down in front of his mask. The sight of her makes his eyes narrow, and he shakes his head until she can no longer hold on. Hornet lands on his open palm, and as always, those claws of his worry her a little.

“How many times have I told you not to bother me in my sleep, little squib?” A growl rumbles in the back of the Hunter’s throat. There’s a red tint to his eyes, just like the amber haze Hornet sees in the newly-infected. Could the Radiance’s victims be trapped in a similar realm, dreaming similar dreams? No, she knows better than to hope like that. The pestilence obliterates a bug’s mind once it has taken hold. Her confrontation with that fallen warrior at Kingdom’s Edge has given her good reason to believe that the Nightmare’s thrall could have a similar effect.

“What part of this looks like your den?” Hornet snaps. The Hunter looks around, and for a moment seems dazed. “I’d wager that you’ve been asleep for several days by now. I came by several times, and you didn’t stir once.”

That’s a lie—she only visited once—but one to startle him awake. The Hunter’s eyes widen. “That can’t be. I would’ve heard you drop a pin from the Queen’s Gardens.”

“It is. I went all the way into your den, and you didn’t even notice me. Sleep any longer, and your territory shall be overrun with all manner of pests. Maybe worse. Who knows when the infected mantises will decide to expand their territory?”

Hornet allows the Hunter to lower her to the ground, and he sits there with the scrunched look of one trying to recall something. He’s not normally this sluggish, but she can hardly blame him. She herself has been out of sorts these days.

“Hrmph. You visited in the night, did you not? Your sleeping habits were always atrocious. Come during the _day_ next time,” he grunts as he shakes twigs and leaves off his mantle. To the point as ever, that’s all he says before stalking away.

“Wait!” By impulse, Hornet pursues him. However, no matter how fast she runs, she can’t seem to keep up. The bushes and thick brambles seem determined to keep her back, but they’re harmless and don’t even scratch her. She tears them away with her bare hands, and comes bursting out into a wide open field.

There’s no sign of the Hunter anywhere. So, he must have woken up already. Hornet stops to catch her breath. Overhead, a flock of vengeflies skim the cavern ceiling, shrieking and swirling in circles around each other. None are close enough to take notice of her and attack, but her presence does attract the attention of someone else. When she looks away from the vengeflies, their eyes meet.

How different that fallen warrior looks when he’s alive and untainted. His deep blue armor is untarnished, and peeking from beneath his hood are a pair of round, white eyes that size her up.

“Hmph. Surely you aren’t headed for the arena unarmed?” His voice reminds Hornet strongly of the nobles’ children who used to visit the palace: haughty, self-important, disdainful. None of them had the best opinions of a little spider girl, even if she was the princess. Hornet rolls her eyes on impulse.

“You mean the ‘Colosseum of Fools’? That place is aptly named. I don’t want anything to do with them,” Hornet replies icily.

“You’d likely die, same as the others,” says the warrior with a shrug. Hornet notices that he’s carrying his shield on his arm, as if he expects battle to come at any moment. “Now, leave me be. I’ve got more important things to do than listen to pedestrians.”

He stalks off, and Hornet considers giving him a piece of her mind. She would have without hesitation, but he is already dead without seeming to recognize the fact. Ghost killed him, and Grimm buried him. The warrior has already paid the ultimate price for his arrogance and blood thirst, so Hornet doesn’t feel the need to punish him any further.

“It’ll be a faster path to the Colosseum if you wake up,” Hornet says, falling into step with him. He makes a ‘tch’ noise and tosses his head.

“I’m as awake as I’ll ever be.” He moves his shield to his upper arm, putting a wall between the two of them. Hornet pushes it right back down and stares right at him. Is that a blush she sees? Well, even the most abrasive bugs can be flustered. It’s a little amusing.

The warrior isn’t as amused. “You’re too close,” he snaps, backing away. Hornet stays where she is, and giggles into her hand. “Don’t laugh!”

“Why not? But you really should wake up now. This barren expanse must be a nightmare for someone who is searching for a crowd.” Again, memories of the Colosseum surface. She sneaked in once, and was appalled by the crush of bodies, the odor, the jeers, the senseless fighting. How could anyone _want_ to go there?

“No, the arena _is_ nearby. Can’t you hear it?” They both go quiet to listen.

“Nothing but the cries of the vengeflies,” says Hornet with a toss of her head.

“Tsk. You’ll hear it if we get closer. Come on.” He gestures for her to follow, and the two make their way across this desert-like environment.

Hornet walks several paces ahead, too light without her needle and too anxious without Grimm. This is unlike anything she has ever experienced. She is not used to new things. Hallownest, for all its chaos, has become predictable over the past century. True, her father had some dominion over dreams, but it had been a safe and controlled environment. She knows not what she’ll find here, or if any injuries she sustains here will carry over to her real body.

This is what she has to worry about, and she’s still alive. It might be best to keep the truth from her walking companion for now.

At the end of the cavern is the sharp-toothed maw of the Colosseum, just as Hornet remembers it. The warrior stops right outside it, no longer looking as confident as he once did. Both look inside and see a scene of carnage unfolding. The bugs here were apt to break out in fights outside of the arena, but not to this scale. Hornet, growing queasy, looks away. She has to give the warrior credit for not flinching.

“Is this truly what you were looking for?” Hornet asks.

“I…” The warrior hesitates. He turns away from the scene, uncertainty in his eyes. “It was beyond everything I had dreamed it to be. It was beyond anything I had prepared for. I didn’t last a minute. Why…?”

Hornet doesn’t know how to answer that. Why, indeed? What comfort can one give to someone who died so brutally? She doesn’t know what will happen to him after this, either. He’s not a Higher Being who might have a chance to come back.

“Let’s go,” is all she can come up with. She gestures for him to follow, and together they go down a different path. The walls echo with the sound of dripping water, and the air grows humid. The sand beneath their feet feels warm.

“I wonder who else is here,” she says lamely, to fill the silence. “There’s someone I’m looking for: a tall bug with red eyes and red plating on his carapace. Have you seen anyone like that?”

She feels remarkably callous, but that’s what she’s best at. It’s no surprise that he doesn’t respond.

“His passing was not as deliberate as yours...” Hornet goes quiet. He’ll never believe her if she tells him all the strange things she experienced. The circumstances of his death, too, would be a great shock. “Are you there?”

She’s alone, all of a sudden. There’s a whisper in the wind that sounds like his final word: ‘why?’. She looks behind her, seeing only her prints in the sand. The dead must not leave tracks, just to keep her from following them.

With time, she finds them anyway, half-buried and desiccated among the dunes, and then in thick, loamy soil. Some are still alive when she gets to them, but in a daze. These ones she shakes until they open their eyes. They’re frightened and confused, but she points them in what she thinks is the right direction, and they totter away. She can only save so many of them, and they’re liable to walk right into the arms of the Infection.

While doing this, Hornet finds a Grimm.

It’s not her Grimm, because this one is far bigger and with a long, thick tail. His great wings are splayed out, and the membrane has mostly decomposed. Still, the sight of him brings a lump to Hornet’s throat. She kneels by his side and puts a hand to his cold cheek.

“Already gone,” she mutters. She secretly hopes that her voice will rouse him to consciousness, which it doesn’t. Now beginning to feel numb, Hornet gets up and moves on to the next body. Somehow, she knew it would be Grimm again. It would make sense that this nightmare would taunt her with false hope, and many Grimms. Soon enough, he is the only bug she comes across. Some are little more than Grimmchildren; others are tall with several extra limbs; still others are almost unrecognizable with their bestial features.

Hornet steps on something soft, and almost loses her footing. The ground became plush when she wasn’t looking: cold, bright reds and violets all stitched together. The bodies here are clustered together, like hatchmates in a nest. Hornet puts a hand on one, surprised that it almost feels warm. For the most part, they’re identical in appearance. It gives one the impression of a shop display of dolls. Again, those veins. They’re all attached to the Grimms, so Hornet takes care not to disturb them as she continues her search.

A deep, soothing glow leads her to a humid, hazy room where moisture clings to her cloak. She hears the steady _thump_ of a great heart, shoving blood through the veins and into the polyps crowded against the walls and ceiling. The floor is sticky, warm, and squelches with each step Hornet takes. She pauses next to a fluid-filled sac and watches the small, fleshy blob floating around inside of it. It’s one of the strangest things she has ever seen. The other polyps seem to contain similar clumps, but she can’t possibly divine their purpose.

Beginning to feel disturbed, she backs out of the room. The heartbeat sounds she heard in there stay in her head, bouncing around her shell until she begins to ache. Sweat beads up on the back of her neck, which she nervously wipes away.

“Grimm?” she calls, uncharacteristically timid. This is a place where she instinctively feels that she has no power, and it is therefore dangerous to her. There is little difference between her and the tiny, feral bugs of the wastelands in this place. She wants to find Grimm so badly that her chest hurts. She repeats his name as she goes deeper and deeper, passing more and more vessels that look like him but aren’t.

He should still have that mark on his chest. If he were here, he would also respond to her voice. She’s sure he would defy death just to reassure her. After all, he had always been there for her when she was lonely or had nightmares. This thought comes naturally to her, as if she had never forgotten it. The Pure Vessel had been too busy with their training and schooling to be the one to keep her company and make sure she wasn’t getting into trouble.

Thinking back on her sibling makes her heart ache. In those days, when they had just finished their final metamorphosis, they would be out of bed before her and back to bed long before she was asleep. They took their meals separately, and even left the Palace more frequently—a detriment to her visits there, which by then were half the week instead of just a weekend.

She could have been angry at Grimm for taking the space meant for her sibling, but the Pure Vessel was going to leave her life sooner or later. If she had known, she would have fought harder to spend more time with them. She would asked to say goodbye. Maybe she would have begged her father to find some other way, but by the time she learned of the true scope of his plan, it was all too late. Grimm was gone by then, too.

She may be clinging so fiercely to Grimm now because she can’t bear to lose him again, like she had lost so many others. She doesn’t even know if Ghost will survive their quest. Please, at least let her have one person. Old, familiar desperation clings to her and pushes her forward. She shoves her way through a tangle of veins and into the innermost sanctum. The light almost blinds her, and she can feel the beating of the massive heart throughout her body.

There, under that heart, she finally finds the Grimm she is looking for. She rushes over to where he is lying on the ground, drops to her knees, and feels for a pulse. It’s there, but faint. An aorta connects him to the Heart beating above, and she knows she can’t just cut him loose and take him away. For the moment, she just focuses on the fact that she found him. After so much time spent apart, there he is. Hornet holds one of his hands to her face, savoring the lingering warmth of his palm.

“I don’t wish for you to leave again,” Hornet mumbles. “I’ve seen what this Ritual does to whatever it touches, and you are always in its grasp, are you not? How many times have you died since we parted, all those years ago?”

“I’ve stopped counting,” says a familiar voice. Hornet looks up, and there’s the Nightmare King, sitting across from her and his own body. On instinct, she throws herself into his arms, and his embrace is just as warm and comforting as it had always been. The space between his arms is the only safe one in the whole of the Nightmare Realm: a space where she starts to remember and understand, even if her memories are in bits and pieces.

“Now, Princess, there’s no need to fret over my absence. I’ve only been gone for a little bit,” the Nightmare King says as he rubs her back. When he does this, her wings emerge and stretch to their full span. The light of the chamber catches off of it like colored glass. Then, he cups her chin and tilts her face up to meet his tired, bright red eyes.

“Are you alright with that?” Hornet trembles slightly, despite the firm grip he has on her. “Are you truly alright with that?”

The Nightmare King looks exhausted. He says nothing, and shakes his head. “In the moments of clarity between one life and the next, the compulsion to continue the Ritual—the very means of my survival—fades. This is a punishment for some long-forgotten transgression. I am constantly dancing between life and death, and when there are no more fallen kingdoms left to siphon off of?”

They both know what will happen to him then. He continues: “I no longer know where the cycle starts: the birth and feeding? Or the death and burning? By the standards of Higher Beings, my existence is particularly vulnerable.”

“I understand,” Hornet says after a brief, choked moment.

She knows what happened to the Higher Beings of Hallownest. The Radiance is an angered shadow of her former self. Her father is dead. The White Lady is diminished and bereft. Unn is weakening. If most bugs knew what Hornet did, they would all give up on worship. A small part of Hornet, leftover from when the Pale King was alive, still holds onto her trust in them. She has to believe that someone out there has the power to make everything okay—if not for her or for Hallownest, for some other kingdom. Each time she gives up on something, or someone, she comes one step closer to unraveling completely. The tapestry of herself only has so many threads.

“I died earlier than I should have, which has disrupted the Ritual. In my current state, I will be unable to pass my consciousness on to the Grimmchild,” says Grimm, with the weight of a hammer pushing nails into a coffin.

They sit there, holding each other under the beat of the Nightmare Heart. Waiting for Grimm to die, waiting for the other to speak again. It would be quite a way to go if he disappeared right here. Hornet’s wings stand on end, searching desperately for a solution. How can one save a Higher Being? What would her father do in this situation? If he gave her his wings, surely his Foresight would not be out of the question.

The Pale King, her _father_ , a Higher Being. One whom she is said to take after, right down to her physical features.

Hornet the Protector can’t save Grimm. Hornet the _half-Wyrm_ certainly could. She stands, bracing herself on Grimm’s shoulders, then holding his face in her hands. He stares up at her questioningly, vulnerable and close to death. There’s no going back. There’s no time to tell him everything she wants to say. So, she kisses him. It’s a soft but awkward kiss, lasting through the bloom of bright light that swallows everything up.

Hornet is alone with the Nightmare Heart, among a sea of veins coming with it. This might just be part of something bigger than herself or Grimm, a beast bigger than the one she entered the Nightmare Realm through. Its color is diminished without its usual surroundings, its beating growing uneven and nervous. It was never meant to be exposed like this.

Each of these veins must be connected to a different incarnation of Grimm, over different times and places. If she wanted to, she could sever all of them, just like she cut down the Vessels. It might kill the Nightmare Heart, she guesses, if she just cut away at it like that. In the midst of her temptation, Grimm’s words replay in her head: _the responsibility of choosing who lives and dies_ …

Hornet’s shoulders tense up. This isn’t a decision she has to make. She only came here for Grimm. She knows not what will happen if she tampers with the Nightmare Heart any further. Nervous and uncertain, she chews her way through the vein. It falls slowly into oblivion.

He helped her remember how to love others. She hopes that with this, she can start to repay that debt.


	19. Chapter 19

Hornet’s wings beat against her back, brushing off the dust and dirt that has collected from her trek through the Howling Cliffs. No travelers have come here, not since the Grimm Troupe’s departure. Just as Hallownest attracts visitors, it might repel them, too. Without the Ritual for Ghost to worry about, they’ve made headway on preparing to face the Infection. Any smart bug would do good to keep their distance, to avoid the fallout of freeing the Hollow Knight.

She would have kept away as well, as Ghost had long since proved themselves strong enough to face most difficulties on their own. However, she found herself watching over them from a distance first and tagging along with them later. There were things about Hallownest that they were curious about: the spider silk traded to the City of Tears in the Kingdom’s waning days, the old husk the Colosseum had been built in, and other things that Hornet once regarded with little interest. She found herself struggling to keep up with them and their seemingly endless energy.

‘Seemingly’ is an important word. Right now, they’ve fallen asleep on the bench in Dirtmouth, much to the amusement of the townsfolk. Hornet sighs and uses some of her silk to fashion a sling, so she can carry them home on her back.

For the time being, ‘home’ is Greenpath, close to the entrance of the Crossroads. Here there is fresh water, prey that is easy to hunt, and relative safety. It is a temporary arrangement, with the hopes that they will all agree on something more permanent later. The current population of their camp is four bugs, and if things go well, Hornet and Ghost’s elder sibling will make it five.

Hornet crawls into Ghost’s den and settles them down into their nest. She is followed in by a little winged figure, who playfully tries to attack her fingers. Hornet catches the mewling creature, and puts a finger to her mouth. “Shh, Phaedra. Let them rest.”

The Grimmchild responds with a loud squeak. Outside the den, she hears another voice.

“She’s vexed that you didn’t take her with you this time.”

“She’ll have to get used to it.” Hornet swings around and deposits Phaedra into Grimm’s arms. “We can’t bring her _everywhere_.”

She scoots back out into the open, where Grimm is sitting on a spread out blanket. Feeling a bit tired herself, she folds her wings away and settles onto his lap. His fingers are immediately on her back, rubbing away the tension she had been carrying all day.

“Tired?” he asks gently. Phaedra has settled around his shoulders like a cute, sleepy stole. Hornet mumbles and shoves her face into his chest. His heartbeat sounds just like any other bug’s now. No more lifelike nightmares. No more shows or strange rituals to perform. She can’t really refer to him as the Troupe Master anymore, when he _has_ no troupe.

The two of them are no strangers to loss and change, but she can keenly sense that he’s struggling to adjust. She gently pushes him onto his back, and Phaedra wiggles out from beneath his neck. Hornet watches her get distracted by and pounce a ball of moss,  chasing it all the way into Ghost’s den. The Vessel rolls over and puts their pillow over their head.

She feels Grimm’s arms around her, holding her against hi m as he gives her a short but sweet kiss. The tips of her horns go pink; she can’t help but look away. Grimm steals another kiss from her and cups her chin, rubbing his thumb just under her eye.

It will be a long time before they are separated again, if she can help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm finished! I think this might be the first long multichapter I've completed, probably. I wish I had this kind of energy for my original stuff (haha........). I'm a little in disbelief right now
> 
> The epilogue is a little short, but I wanted to end things before the Temple of the Black Egg was opened. Herrah's death is kind of a big deal for Hornet and I didn't want that, nor the end of the game, to be overshadowed by my bug OTP kissing. But yes. Done! Thank you everyone who read all the way to the end :)

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone else is writing Grimmnet so I have to write it too. That's just how it works. Also I was planning to write more for it anyway?? I know I was gonna make a continuation for that last Grimmnet collection I wrote but I just pffbt I wanted to write stuff that happened during game. I PROMISE I'll write the sequel to the other fic eventually. I just end up taking on a lot of projects and cycling through them, as usual, LOL


End file.
